Senior Customer Success Manager

About this role

<h2><strong>About Buildkite</strong></h2> <p>At Buildkite, we’re on a mission to unblock every developer on the planet by helping developers create faster, test smarter, and innovate beyond limits. Our Scale-Out Delivery Platform is trusted by some of tech’s most innovative companies — including Airbnb, Block, Canva, Elastic, Twilio, and Uber. We’ve rethought how CI/CD should work, building a platform that’s fast, reliable, secure, and scales to meet the needs of high-growth tech companies.</p> <h2><strong>Role Description</strong></h2> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <h2><strong>Your Impact</strong></h2> <p><strong>Strategic Account Leadership</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Account Ownership: </strong>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.</li> <li><strong>Value Realization: </strong>Drive measurable business outcomes from the Buildkite investment by aligning each account’s success plan to the customer’s core engineering and business goals.</li> <li><strong>Internal Orchestration: </strong>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.</li> <li><strong>Cadence Design: </strong>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.</li> <li><strong>Operating Model Contribution: </strong>Shape the playbooks, processes, and operating model of a founding CS function — and mentor future hires as the team scales.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Executive Influence and Customer Partnership</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Executive Engagement: </strong>Cultivate and maintain trusted relationships with customer C-suite, VP, Director, and program-owner stakeholders — including the executive sponsor accountable for the Buildkite investment.</li> <li><strong>Business Translation: </strong>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.</li> <li><strong>Executive Business Reviews: </strong>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.</li> <li><strong>Customer Advocacy: </strong>Amplify the voice of the customer inside Buildkite, ensuring Product, Engineering, and Support stay focused on what matters most to the accounts you own.</li> <li><strong>Stakeholder Navigation: </strong>Navigate complex internal and customer organizations to drive consensus, surface blockers, and align stakeholders to the outcomes the partnership depends on.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Risk, Renewal, and Expansion Readiness</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Account Health: </strong>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.</li> <li><strong>Renewal Strategy: </strong>Partner with the Account Executive on renewal strategy by driving the value narrative, customer readiness, and account health that underpin every commercial conversation.</li> <li><strong>Expansion Sourcing: </strong>Identify and source expansion opportunities through the Customer-Sourced Qualified Lead (CSQL) process — turning customer outcomes into growth.</li> <li><strong>Onboarding: </strong>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.</li> </ul> <h2><strong>You’re a Strong Fit if You Have</strong></h2> <ul> <li>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</li> <li>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</li> <li>A demonstrable track record of driving retention and expansion outcomes on a…