The posting
About the Team
Customer Engineering & Success is where CircleCI’s customer relationships are won, deepened, and renewed. The organization brings together the technical teams that help customers succeed with CircleCI at every stage, from the first proof-of-concept through enterprise-wide adoption and long-term partnership. It includes four groups:
- Field Engineering, which partners with Sales on technical discovery, solution design, and proofs-of-concept, and advises high-touch accounts after the sale.
- Technical Success Management, which guides strategic, enterprise, and commercial customers to adoption, value, and expansion.
- Digital Customer Success, which serves SMB customers through a scaled, data-driven engagement model.
- Support Engineering, which resolves complex technical issues for customers around the world, around the clock.
The team works across North America, Europe, and Japan and serves engineering organizations at companies of every size. CircleCI processes more than a million builds a day, so this team sees how the world’s best engineering teams ship software. It turns that insight into better outcomes for customers and a stronger product. Its work drives retention, expansion, and revenue directly.
About the Role
Reporting to the Chief Revenue Officer, the VP of Customer Engineering & Success leads CircleCI’s full technical customer journey, from pre-sales technical wins through adoption, support, renewal, and expansion. You’ll unite field engineering, technical success, digital success, and support engineering into one connected motion, so customers get a consistent and expert experience no matter how they engage with us.
Success in this role means higher net revenue retention, lower churn, faster time-to-value, and stronger technical win rates. It also means an organization that scales efficiently through the right mix of high-touch, pooled, and digital engagement. You’ll be the voice of the customer at the executive table and shape product priorities, go-to-market strategy, and the annual plan with insight drawn directly from how customers use CircleCI.
What You’ll Do:
- Set the vision, strategy, and operating model for a global organization spanning Field Engineering, Technical Success Management, Digital Customer Success, and Support Engineering, and integrate pre-sales and post-sales technical engagement into one seamless customer journey.
- Own retention and expansion outcomes, including gross and net revenue retention, churn reduction, and adoption, and partner with Sales leadership to drive technical wins and land-and-expand growth.
- Build a coverage model that matches customer segment to engagement type (high-touch, pooled, and digital/scaled), and use data and automation to scale efficiently as the customer base grows.
- Lead, develop, and retain a high-performing team of senior leaders and individual contributors across North America, EMEA, and APAC, and build strong succession and career paths.
- Establish the metrics, health scoring, forecasting, and operating rhythms that give the business clear visibility into customer health, support performance, and team productivity.
- Serve as the executive voice of the customer, working closely with Product, Engineering, Sales, and Marketing to influence the roadmap, improve the product experience, and align company priorities with customer needs.
What You’ll Bring:
- 15+ years of experience in customer success, solutions or field engineering, technical support, or other technical customer-facing leadership roles, primarily at B2B SaaS companies
- 10+ years leading leaders, including multi-function organizations that combine both pre-sales and post-sales technical teams
- Proven track record owning and improving gross and net revenue retention, churn, and expansion metrics at scale
- Experience building and scaling global teams across multiple regions and time zones, including follow-the-sun support operations
- Hands-on experience designing segmented customer engagement models (high-touch, pooled, and digital/scaled) and the tooling and data infrastructure behind them
- Strong technical foundation in software development, DevOps practices, CI/CD, and cloud technologies, credible enough to engage directly with customer engineering leaders
- 10+ years developing go-to-market strategies tied to annual planning and quarterly execution, including headcount and budget ownership
- Experience working at the executive level in a matrixed environment to influence Product, Engineering, and Sales priorities
Bonus Skills (Nice to Have)
- Experience in DevOps, CI/CD, developer tools, or platform engineering companies
- Background leading organizations through a merger of functions (for example, combining pre-sales engineering and post-sales success teams under one leader)
- Experience with consumption- or usage-based pricing models and the adoption and expansion motions that go with them
- Experience building or scaling a professional services or paid technical advisory offering
- Experience using AI and automation to scale customer engagement, support deflection, or health monitoring
- Customer success leadership in a high-growth or post-restructure environment where you built new motions from the ground up
Expected salary range for San Francisco and the surrounding area.
US SF Bay Area (Metro Zone 3)
$261,500—$327,000 USD
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
About CircleCI
CircleCI is the world’s largest continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform, and the hub where code moves from idea to delivery. As one of the most-used DevOps tools - processing more than 3 million jobs a day - CircleCI has unique access to data on how the most effective engineering teams work, and the tools to help software companies successfully leverage the power of AI into their commercial applications. Companies like Hinge, HuggingFace, and Samsung use us to improve engineering team productivity, release better products, and get to market faster.
Founded in 2011 and headquartered in downtown San Francisco with a global, remote workforce, CircleCI is venture-backed by Base10, Greenspring Associates, Eleven Prime, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Baseline Ventures, Threshold Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Owl Rock Capital, Next Equity Partners, Heavybit, and Harrison Metal Capital.
CircleCI is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
How CircleCI Uses AI in Hiring
At CircleCI, people make our hiring decisions. We use technology to support our recruiting team so they can spend more time on what matters most: getting to know you.
Where we may use AI
- Job descriptions and messaging: AI may help draft job descriptions and role-specific messaging so they are clear and accurate.
- Application review: For some roles, we use an AI tool to review applications, including resumes and application responses, against criteria our hiring team sets for the role. The tool generates a fit score and summary to help recruiters organize and prioritize applications.
- Interview notes: With advance notice, an AI note-taking tool may join interviews to record, transcribe, and summarize the conversation. This lets interviewers focus on talking with you. You will be told before each interview, and you may opt out at any stage by letting your recruiter know. If you opt out, the tool will not join, and your candidacy is not affected.
- Outreach: AI may help draft candidate outreach and scheduling messages, which our team reviews before sending.
Our commitment
AI does not make hiring decisions at CircleCI. Our recruiters and hiring teams review candidates and make every decision to advance or reject an application. No candidate is rejected based solely on an AI score. We have tools and processes in place to test for bias and to review how these tools perform, and we adjust our approach as AI technology and the laws that govern it change.
Your choices
You can ask for human-only review of your application, opt out of AI interview note-taking, request an accommodation, or ask questions about how we use AI. Contact [email protected]. For how we handle your data, including retention, see our Privacy Policy.
