Senior Customer Success Manager
Buildkite•3h ago
United StatesRemoteFull-timeSenior Level5+ yrs exp
Top focus
Customer Success Manager
- About Buildkite
- At Buildkite, we’re on a mission to unblock every developer on the planet by helping developers create faster, test smarter
- innovate beyond limits. Our Scale-Out Delivery Platform is trusted by some of tech’s most innovative companies — including Airbnb, Block, Canva, Elastic, Twilio
- Uber. We’ve rethought how CI/CD should work, building a platform that’s fast, reliable, secure
- scales to meet the needs of high-growth tech companies.
- Role Description
- The Senior Customer Success Manager is a highly strategic, senior individual contributor responsible for driving quantifiable business impact across a focused portfolio of Buildkite’s highest-impact Enterprise customers. As the Strategic Customer Partner on those named accounts, you are the primary owner of the customer relationship — accountable for the adoption of Buildkite, the value the customer realizes from it
- the long-term health of the partnership across renewal and expansion.
- This is a founding role on a small, senior team. You will operate autonomously across complex Enterprise accounts, integrate every Buildkite motion that touches the customer — commercial, technical
- executive — into a coherent experience
- help shape the operating model of a CS function still being built. We’re looking for someone who wants to define the role, not just fill it. This is an Individual Contributor position.
- Your Impact
- Strategic Account Leadership
- Account Ownership: Own the post-sale state of a portfolio of named Enterprise accounts as the customer’s single accountable partner at Buildkite — across health, adoption, retention, and expansion identification.
- Value Realization: Drive measurable business outcomes from the Buildkite investment by aligning each account’s success plan to the customer’s core engineering and business goals.
- Internal Orchestration: Act as the central Buildkite resource on the account — mobilizing Account Executives, Technical Account Managers, Solutions, Product
- Support so the customer experiences one cohesive Buildkite.
- Cadence Design: Determine when and how to engage each account based on the value it returns to the customer — right-sizing engagement so every interaction earns its place on the customer’s calendar.
- Operating Model Contribution: Shape the playbooks, processes, and operating model of a founding CS function — and mentor future hires as the team scales.
- Executive Influence and Customer Partnership
- Executive Engagement: Cultivate and maintain trusted relationships with customer C-suite, VP, Director, and program-owner stakeholders — including the executive sponsor accountable for the Buildkite investment.
- Business Translation: Translate technical adoption and platform health into the business outcomes that matter to executive sponsors, and into the language they use with their own leadership.
- Executive Business Reviews: Lead the EBR cadence with the AE and TAM — bringing the value narrative, customer readiness, and forward-looking strategy that keeps the partnership on track.
- Customer Advocacy: Amplify the voice of the customer inside Buildkite, ensuring Product, Engineering, and Support stay focused on what matters most to the accounts you own.
- Stakeholder Navigation: Navigate complex internal and customer organizations to drive consensus, surface blockers, and align stakeholders to the outcomes the partnership depends on.
- Risk, Renewal, and Expansion Readiness
- Account Health: Maintain a live view of technical, commercial, support
- relationship signals across your portfolio — surface risk early, mobilize the right Buildkite resources
- prevent escalation through proactive partnership.
- Renewal Strategy: Partner with the Account Executive on renewal strategy by driving the value narrative, customer readiness, and account health that underpin every commercial conversation.
- Expansion Sourcing: Identify and source expansion opportunities through the Customer-Sourced Qualified Lead (CSQL) process — turning customer outcomes into growth.
- Onboarding: Partner with the Technical Account Manager on the first 90 days, and sustain the joint CSM/TAM cadence that drives customers from go-live to long-term value.
- You’re a Strong Fit if You Have
- 5+ years in Customer Success, strategic account management, or a senior post-sale role at a B2B SaaS company, owning Enterprise accounts end-to-end as the person accountable for value, retention, and expansion
- Direct experience at a CI/CD, DevOps, developer tools
- technical infrastructure SaaS company — enough domain fluency to navigate engineering conversations and the CI/CD problem space credibly, without trying to be the technical expert
- A demonstrable track record of driving retention and expansion outcomes on a named Enterprise book
- Exceptional executive communication and presence — comfortable engaging VP, CTO, and C-suite stakeholders, and translating technical work into the business outcomes their leadership cares about
- The ability to handle objections, navigate complicated discussions, and drive alignment across customer and internal stakeholders — with persistence in the face of adversity
- Experience orchestrating across Sales, Solutions, Support, Product, and Marketing to deliver a coherent customer experience across complex, multi-stakeholder accounts
- Strong commercial instincts — you understand how your work connects to renewal health, churn risk, and expansion, and you operate effectively alongside AEs and Renewals
- A strong autonomous operator who wants to define the role, not just fill it — comfortable building in a founding-team environment, shaping the playbook as you run the play
- contributing directly to the operating model of a new function
- Nice to Have
- Hands-on familiarity with Buildkite or comparable CI/CD platforms (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Harness, GitLab CI) — enough to navigate a customer’s CI/CD architecture conversation without needing translation
- Experience partnering with Technical Account Managers or Solutions Architects in a model where the technical and relationship roles are explicitly separated
- Familiarity with CS platforms (Vitally, Catalyst, Gainsight, Totango, or similar) and modern revenue stacks (Salesforce, Avoma, ChartMogul, or equivalent)
- Background contributing to or building out a CS function from an early stage — not just executing within an established one
- Why You’ll Love Working at Buildkite
- Remote-first culture and support for work-life balance
- Competitive compensation and benefits package
- Meaningful work alongside some of the most innovative engineering teams in tech
- Opportunities for professional growth, learning, and career development
- A supportive, collaborative team culture where your ideas and expertise matter
- Compensation — $140–155K
- 🌈 Equal Opportunity Employer
- At Buildkite, we value diversity and celebrate all types of skills, backgrounds
- experiences. We’re dedicated to fostering an inclusive environment and providing reasonable accommodations throughout our recruitment process.
- If you need any accommodations or support during the application or interview process, please reach out to us at accommodations@buildkite.com.
Required skills
Customer SuccessAccount ManagementB2B SaaSCI/CDDevOpsTechnical Infrastructure