Lead, Retention Strategy

About Coursera Coursera and Udemy are now one company, creating one of the world's most comprehensive skills development platforms for the AI era. This strengthens our ability to accelerate AI-powered innovation and shape how the world discovers and builds skills at a pivotal moment of change. Read more about the combined company by visiting our blog.

Coursera was launched in 2012 by Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller with a mission to provide universal access to world-class learning. Coursera partners with leading university and industry partners to offer a broad catalog of content and credentials, including courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, and degrees. Coursera’s platform innovations — including AI-powered personalized guide and features, like Role Play and Course Builder, and role-based solutions like Skills Tracks — enable instructors, partners, and companies to deliver scalable, personalized, and verified learning. Institutions worldwide rely on Coursera to upskill and reskill their employees, students, and citizens in high-demand fields such as GenAI, data science, technology, and business, while learners globally turn to Coursera to master the skills they need to advance their careers. Coursera is a Delaware public benefit corporation and a B Corp. Coursera recently combined with Udemy to create one of the world’s most comprehensive skills development platforms.

Why Join Us At Coursera, we’re looking for inventors, innovators, and lifelong learners ready to shape the future of education. You’ll help build global programs and tools that power online learning for millions turning bold ideas into real impact. People who thrive here are customer-first builders who move fast, simplify ruthlessly, and iterate relentlessly on the metrics that matter.

We’re a globally distributed team that comes together intentionally for collaboration, complex problem-solving, and key milestones — creating opportunities for teams to do their best work together. Our virtual hiring and onboarding experience makes it easy to join us and start making an impact from anywhere. If you’re ready to make a global impact, help scale unique products across Coursera + Udemy, and grow your career, apply below.

Job Overview Within the Consumer organization, our work centers on helping learners discover, engage with, and realize value from the combined Udemy and Coursera portfolio. The Monetization team plays a critical role in shaping how customers evaluate, purchase, renew, and continue benefiting from our offerings, with a focus on improving learner value, retention, and long-term business outcomes.

We are seeking a Lead, Retention Strategy to drive the strategy, operating cadence, and cross-functional agenda for reducing voluntary and involuntary churn across our Consumer business.

In this role, you will be responsible for understanding why customers churn, identifying the highest-impact opportunities to improve retention, and building the business cases needed to prioritize initiatives across Product, Lifecycle, Monetization, Payments, Analytics, Data Science, Research, and Support. You will analyze customer behavior across key flows, geographies, channels, buyer segments, and subscription journeys to uncover opportunities that improve renewal rates, engagement, save outcomes, winback performance, and long-term customer value.

This role requires a combination of analytical rigor, strategic thinking, customer empathy, and cross-functional leadership. You will serve as a key thought partner to leaders across the Consumer organization and help ensure retention opportunities are clearly diagnosed, financially sized, prioritized, tested, and scaled.

Responsibilities Track Coursera + Udemy retention metrics across key customer segments, geographies, platforms, acquisition channels, buyer segments, subscription products, and renewal cohorts, identifying the key drivers of voluntary and involuntary churn throughout the customer lifecycle.

Develop a data-driven retention strategy by partnering with Research, Analytics, Data Science, and Support to combine customer behavior, qualitative insights, and business performance data, translating findings into prioritized opportunities and business cases.

Analyze key customer journeys—including onboarding, discovery, engagement, subscription usage, cancellation, renewal, save, and winback—to identify opportunities that improve learner value, renewal rates, engagement, and long-term customer value.

Partner with Product, Lifecycle, Monetization, and Payments teams to prioritize and shape initiatives that improve retention, including engagement strategies, pricing and promotional approaches, save and winback programs, and payment recovery efforts that reduce involuntary churn.

Own the retention experimentation roadmap, including opportunity sizing, prioritization, success metrics, test design, readouts, and recommendations for scaling successful initiatives.

Lead the cross-functional retention operating cadence, aligning stakeholders on priorities, progress, risks, decisions, and execution while driving accountability across partner teams.

Develop scalable frameworks, metrics, and decision tools that enable consistent evaluation, prioritization, and measurement of retention initiatives across the Consumer organization.

Communicate retention performance, strategic recommendations, and business impact through executive-ready narratives, dashboards, business cases, and decision documents, serving as a trusted thought partner to Consumer leadership.

Basic Qualifications 7+ years of experience in retention strategy, growth, monetization, product strategy, lifecycle marketing, analytics, management consulting, business operations, or a related analytical discipline.

Experience driving strategy and decision-making in a subscription or recurring revenue business, with exposure to retention, renewal, churn, engagement, pricing, payments, or monetization.

Strong analytical skills with experience using customer and business data to diagnose problems, size opportunities, evaluate experiments, and develop business cases.

Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive alignment across complex initiatives.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience presenting recommendations to senior leaders.

Strong ownership, business judgment, and ability to operate independently in an ambiguous environment.

Preferred Qualifications Experience in a consumer subscription, SaaS, marketplace, e-commerce, media, or education technology business.

Experience leading initiatives focused on retention, renewal, churn reduction, lifecycle engagement, payment recovery, or customer lifetime value.

Familiarity with experimentation, SQL or BI tools, and working closely with Analytics or Data Science teams.

Experience developing executive-level business reviews, strategic recommendations, or operating dashboards.

Compensation This role is available in the following US Pay Zones: US Zone 3: $147,475 - $173,500 US Zone 4: $137,275 - $161,500 At Coursera, we offer competitive, zone-based pay aligned to your location, experience, and role level across four U.S. pay zones. Our total rewards package goes beyond salary, with comprehensive health and wellness benefits, bonus and RSU equity programs, and global perks designed to help you grow and thrive wherever you are.

US Pay Zones Zone 1 – San Francisco Bay Area only Zone 2 – New York City Metro and Seattle Metro Zone 3 – CA (outside of SF Bay Area), CO, CT, DC, GA, IL, MA, MD, NY/NJ (outside of NYC Metro), OR, RI, TX, VA, WA (outside of Seattle Metro) Zone 4 – All other US locations not listed in Zones 1–3