Customer Success Engineer | Job Description

Key Responsibilities: What Does a Customer Success Engineer Do?

Customer Success Engineers are technically-inclined people who excel at finding solutions to customer concerns or blockers, acting as an implementation ally and product specialist throughout the customer journey. CS Engineers are results-oriented and often collaborate with clients on deeply technical issues. As such, they need to be trained in CS Ops, have at least some basic coding knowledge, and also be sociable so as to service customers with empathy and care.

While first-time CS engineers may solely work within the product itself and data-management solutions (such as Power BI, Power Automate, etc), senior customer success engineers typically learn applicable coding languages. This training is sometimes available on the job or made available as a growth opportunity. The level of technical knowledge and training also influences compensation and promotion to senior customer success engineer.

*Customer Success Engineers make on average $64,585, while Senior Customer Success make on average $167,604, the number above is the average of the two. CS Engineers typically advance quickly to a Senior position, provided their skills and experience are sufficient. The position comes with additional responsibilities.

Key Responsibilities:

• Act as a product expert for both the customers and the customer success team itself, bridging the gap between what’s needed, what’s possible, and how to achieve it.
• Act as a technical implementation ally for high-touch, tech-touch, and enterprise customers as well as the lead CSMs for those accounts.
• Learn everything about the product, any new features and assist in their deployment and implementation.
• Maintain the product and work with both the Product and Customer Success teams to ensure the best possible experience for the customers.
• Work with fellow CSMs on tech issues related to the product.
• Ability to maintain customer-focus while under budget constraints.
• Own the technical side of product implementations and installations, creating playbooks and working constantly to support high-touch accounts in their use of the product.
• Monitor customer outcomes, goal-alignment, satisfaction, and be efficient when implementing fixes.
• Fix product issues to the best of their ability or escalate to the Senior CS Engineer and / or Product team and work with them to implement a fix.

Additional Senior Customer Success Engineer Responsibilities:

• Having a holistic view of customer success and the organization’s products and services – prioritizing high-touch, best-fit, or enterprise accounts based on organizational guidelines.
• Train fellow CSMs in tech issues related to the product – how to fix common ones, when to escalate, and how to be proactive and set triggers to anticipate known bugs.
• Engineering solutions tailored to Enterprise clients to ensure their success and advance customer relationships and business goals.

Here are the necessary skills to be a good customer success engineer:

As customer success engineer is a fairly new position, we have seen significant discrepancies when it comes to job requirements, particularly in and around coding. In fact, most serious job posts from large enterprises do not require coding knowledge. However, lesser-known companies often require more experience with multiple coding languages. Here’s a broad list of what we have found:

• Experience working with and managing cloud-based software solutions, web apps, mobile apps, or API apps (based on specific posting).
• Some experience in product design and architecture.
• Some coding experience in diverse programming languages (based on specific posting).
• Business experience, management experience, or equivalent bachelor’s degree in business or related field.
• High-level problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
• The ability to diagnose software issues, particularly focusing on product implementation.
• The ability to suggest fixes, assist in more high-level issues, and fix simple product issues without additional help.
• Good emotional intelligence, empathy, and interpersonal skills.
• Good customer service skills.
• High level of independence and professionalism.
• Good communication skills and ability to maintain conversations with clients in a diplomatic and goal-focused manner.
• Strong analytical and goal-oriented mindset.

Additional Senior Customer Success Engineer Skills:

• Extensive experience managing cloud-based software solutions, web apps, mobile apps, or API apps (based on specific posting).
• Experience in product design, architecture.
• Knowledge of database management
• Ability to code in several languages such as: Java, Python, SQL (based on specific posting)
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, Big Data platforms, and cloud technologies.
• Knowledge of monitoring and management tools.
• Experience with development lifecycle (based on specific posting).
• Extensive experience supporting customers in SaaS environments.

Comparison: Customer Success Manager vs Customer Success Engineer

To clear up the confusion, here is a side by side comparison with a typical CSM role:

FAQs

1. Do you have to code for a customer success engineer job?

Usually yes, though the level of coding experience required will vary from one job to another. A decent bit of experience with cloud-based apps, web apps, mobile apps, product design, and architecture should have you covered for entry-level postings. Customer success engineers are not typically in charge of product engineering, though they may need to identify product issues and implement fixes on occasion.

2. Why should customer success and engineering work together?

Both teams need to understand each-other for the business to succeed. Customer success needs to understand product constraints and engineering issues, while Product Engineering needs to understand that successful customers will stay with the business longer, increase their lifetime value, and become loyal to your product. The gap between the two teams is often bridged by a customer success engineer.