Staff Customer Success Manager

Buildkite is on a mission to unblock every developer by helping them create faster and innovate beyond limits. They are seeking a Staff Customer Success Manager who will manage strategic enterprise customer relationships and lead initiatives to enhance the customer success function.

Responsibilities:

• Own end-to-end relationships on Buildkite's most strategic accounts — multi-org, multi-BU, and reference-tier customers with significant ARR concentration — as the customer's single accountable partner at Buildkite
• Drive measurable business outcomes from the Buildkite investment at the scale and complexity that Buildkite's most strategic accounts require — aligning each account's success plan to enterprise-wide engineering and business goals
• Mobilize the full Buildkite organization — Account Executives, Technical Account Managers, Solutions, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Executive Leadership — across complex multi-stakeholder accounts so the customer experiences one cohesive Buildkite
• Right-size engagement on accounts where every stakeholder is senior and every interaction matters — calibrating cadence so the partnership earns its place on the customer's calendar without over-engineering it
• Contribute to the strategic direction of the Customer Success function in partnership with the Director of Customer Success — informing how Buildkite covers, supports, and grows its most important customers
• Drive C-suite, CTO, and board-level engagement on customer outcomes and strategic direction — comfortable as the Buildkite executive presence on the account
• Translate platform investment into board-level business outcomes, in the language the customer's executives use with their own leadership and board
• Lead the EBR cadence with the AE and TAM at the executive tier — bringing the value narrative, customer readiness, and forward-looking strategy that keeps the most strategic partnerships on track
• Amplify the voice of Buildkite's most strategic customers inside Buildkite — ensuring Product, Engineering, and Executive Leadership stay focused on what matters most to the accounts that shape the company's direction
• Navigate the most complex internal and customer organizations — driving consensus, surfacing blockers, and aligning stakeholders at every level to the outcomes the partnership depends on
• Set the bar for the function — help define the playbooks, KPIs, success-plan templates, and engagement standards the CS team operates on, and evolve them as the function scales
• Mentor and develop CSMs and Sr. CSMs across the team — raise the bar on judgment, executive engagement, and strategic ownership; help future hires ramp to full strategic ownership of their books
• Lead cross-functional initiatives across CS, Product, Sales, and Marketing that improve how Buildkite delivers post-sale value — initiatives that outlast your direct ownership of them
• Set the standard for risk identification, renewal strategy, and expansion sourcing across the team — informing how every CSM on the team thinks about the commercial health of their book

Requirements:

• 8+ years in Customer Success, Strategic Account Management, or post-sale strategic relationship roles at top-tier B2B SaaS companies — with at least 3 years operating at the Sr. CSM level or equivalent
• A track record of owning Buildkite-scale strategic customer relationships — multi-million ARR, complex multi-stakeholder, multi-BU — as the person accountable for value, retention, and expansion
• Exceptional executive presence and communication — C-suite, CTO, and board-level engagement is comfortable and well-practiced, and you translate technical work into the business outcomes their leadership cares about
• Demonstrated impact on team and function — you've built playbooks, mentored teams, and driven cross-functional initiatives that outlasted your direct ownership of them
• Direct experience in CI/CD, DevOps, or developer infrastructure SaaS — deep domain expertise and strong technical fluency, without trying to be the technical expert
• Strong commercial fluency — you understand pricing, packaging, and the economics of named-account coverage, and you operate effectively alongside AEs and Renewals
• Comfort operating as both an IC and a function-leader on the same day — owning a customer relationship in the morning and reshaping the operating model in the afternoon
• 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
• Player/coach experience — formal or informal team leadership in an IC capacity, including line-of-sight responsibility for the development of less-senior CSMs
• Experience leading or shaping a CS function from an early stage at a developer-infrastructure or B2B SaaS company — not just executing within an established one
• 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)