Senior 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, 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.

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, 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.

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, 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.