Senior Customer Success Manager

About Buildkite

Buildkite's CI platform is trusted by the world's leading engineering teams, helping ship software used by more than 1 billion people every day. Companies including Canva, Meta, Mistral AI, and NVIDIA rely on Buildkite to run builds, tests, and deployments on their infrastructure, ours, or both - giving them the speed, reliability, and flexibility to ship with confidence.

About the Role

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, and 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, and executive — into a coherent experience, and 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.

What You'll Do

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, and 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, and relationship signals across your portfolio — surface risk early, mobilize the right Buildkite resources, and 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.

This Is You 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
• You bring direct experience at a CI/CD, DevOps, developer tools, or 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
• You have a demonstrable track record of driving retention and expansion outcomes on a named Enterprise book
• You communicate with exceptional executive presence — comfortable engaging VP, CTO, and C-suite stakeholders, and translating technical work into the business outcomes their leadership cares about
• You're able to handle objections, navigate complicated discussions, and drive alignment across customer and internal stakeholders — with persistence in the face of adversity
• You have experience orchestrating across Sales, Solutions, Support, Product, and Marketing to deliver a coherent customer experience across complex, multi-stakeholder accounts
• You bring strong commercial instincts — you understand how your work connects to renewal health, churn risk, and expansion, and you operate effectively alongside AEs and Renewals
• You're 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, and contributing directly to the operating model of a new function

Bonus Points If...

• 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

Benefits

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