Customer Success Manager - Cybersecurity Startup Career

Chainguard; United States; Remote; USD 113,000 - 138,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote‑First Culture

Equity with 10 years to exercise

Health insurance 100% covered

Unlimited flexible time off

18 weeks paid parental leave

Job summary

Chainguard, a cybersecurity startup, is hiring a Customer Success Manager to own post‑sales engagements with Enterprise customers, including onboarding, adoption, and renewal strategies. This remote role reports to the CS leadership and partners with Solutions Architects, Product Management, Engineering, and Sales to deliver time‑to‑value.

You should bring 3+ years in SMB/mid‑market customer‑facing roles, domain knowledge in supply chain security or DevSecOps, and an entrepreneurial mindset.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience in SMB and mid‑market customer‑facing roles collaborating with technical and business teams.
• Relevant domain knowledge in one or more: Supply Chain Security, DevSecOps, AppSec, security infrastructure, regulatory compliance, vulnerability management.
• Entrepreneurial mindset; ability to build new processes on a new team and operate with autonomy.
• Demonstrates commitment to continuous personal and professional development and strong prioritization.
• Strong communication and collaboration across cross‑functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead onboarding for new customers and formulate onboarding plans with pre‑sales and post‑sales teams.
• Advocate for customer needs to internal teams and align with multiple departments.
• Collaborate with Technical Support and Customer Engineering to resolve issues timely.
• Develop hands‑on technical knowledge of Chainguard and stay updated on industry trends.
• Educate customers on product features, best practices, and security principles with the Edu team.
• Develop relationships with customer stakeholders from technicians to CISOs and support renewal/upsell strategies.

Skills

Containers

DevSecOps

Supply chain security

Stakeholder management

Autonomous processes

Job description

Customer Success Manager - Cybersecurity Startup Career — Remote

Career Growth in a High-Stakes Niche:

Supply chain security and DevSecOps are among the fastest-growing segments in cybersecurity. Building deep expertise here — with customers like OpenAI and Snowflake on your portfolio — is a significant resume accelerator for future roles in enterprise security SaaS.

Compensation Assessment:

The up-to $125,000 base plus bonus is competitive for a mid-level CSM in the security/SaaS space, though top-of-market enterprise CSM roles at comparable-stage companies (Series B–D) typically range from $120,000–$160,000. The equity package (10-year exercise window, secondary offering participation) is notably founder-friendly and above standard — a genuine green flag for startup equity value.

Skills You'll Develop:

• Technical fluency in containers, DevSecOps, and software supply chain security — all in high demand
• Executive-level stakeholder management (up to CISO level)
• Autonomous process-building in an early-stage CS team — foundational for future CS leadership roles

Green Flags:

Strong investor backing (Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins), marquee customer logos, and an explicitly new CS team signal both company momentum and career-defining opportunity to shape the function. Unlimited PTO, 100% health coverage, and 18-week parental leave indicate a mature benefits philosophy despite startup stage.

Red Flags to Consider:

"Up to $125k" language suggests the ceiling is firm; negotiating room may be limited. The role demands high autonomy on a new team — rewarding for self-starters, but potentially lacking mentorship structure for earlier-career candidates. Entrepreneurial mindset is listed as a requirement, not a preference — expect ambiguity.

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk.

Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake.

Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.

The role, in a nutshell:

As a Customer Success Manager at Chainguard, you will be the post-sales primary point of contact for our Enterprise customers. You will be responsible for taking lead on customer engagements across onboarding, implementation, and adoption. In this role, you will work closely with Solutions Architects, Technical Support, Product Management, Engineering and Sales to ensure the successful onboarding and support of your customers. You are their day-to-day contact, building relationships with customers and driving outcomes, adoption, and delivering time-to-value.

What you’ll do:

• Customer Onboarding: Lead the technical onboarding process for new customers. Partner with customers, pre-sales, and post‑sales teams to understand requirements, goals, and challenges to formulate an onboarding plan.
• Customer Advocacy: Act as the voice of the customer within the organization, advocating for customer needs and requirements to internal teams. This means being a team player and having strong collaboration skills — this role must align with many different internal teams, influence them to act toward customer needs.
• Issue Management: Collaborate with Technical Support and Customer Engineering teams to ensure timely resolution to customer issues.
• Product Expertise: Develop hands‑on technical knowledge of Chainguard and stay up-to-date with industry trends, new features, and best practices so you can help customers optimize their use of Chainguard.
• Training & Education: Collaborate with customers and our Edu team to ensure customers are educated on product features, best practices, and security principles.
• Account Management: Develop relationships with multiple levels of customer stakeholders from technicians to CISOs. Work closely with sales teams to identify the best path to renew and expand customers while minimizing churn risks.

What we’re looking for:

• 3+ years experience in SMB and mid‑market customer‑facing roles collaborating with both technical and business teams — Customer Success, Professional Services, Technical Account Management or a combination of those plus Sales, Solutions Engineering, or Technical Support.
• Relevant domain knowledge of one or more of the following: Supply Chain Security, DevSecOps, AppSec, security infrastructure, containers, regulatory compliance requirements, vulnerability management, software development lifecycle.
• This is a strategic and proactive role; our expectation is that this person will take full ownership of their customer portfolio and act with a high level of autonomy. This includes making key decisions to drive effective customer outcomes — deciding when to include our executive team or C‑suite in customer escalations, how to de‑risk or de‑escalate customer issues and conflict, and advocating to internal teams including sales, product, engineering, etc.
• An entrepreneurial mindset — this is a new team at Chainguard where you will be required to both deviate from established procedure and often build entirely new processes or practices to ensure we best serve customers.
• Demonstrates a strong commitment to continuous personal and professional development, actively seeking opportunities to enhance skills, expand knowledge, and advance within their career and field.
• Driven, high emotional intelligence, and strong priority management skills.

Strongly Preferred:

• Previous early‑stage startup experience
• Passion for technology & cybersecurity
• Relevant hands‑on technical experience in one or more of the following domains: cloud computing environments (AWS, GCP, Azure), containers, Linux, Supply Chain Security, DevSecOps, AppSec, security infrastructure, regulatory compliance requirements, vulnerability management, software development lifecycle

Compensation:

Up to $125,000 base salary + bonus

About Us

We live and breathe our company values:

• We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
• We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
• We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
• We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well‑informed decisions.

A few of the benefits we offer:

• Flexible & Remote‑First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi‑annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
• Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
• 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
• Unlimited Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need — to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
• 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non‑birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.

Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

Is this Customer Success Manager role fully remote? Yes, Chainguard operates a remote‑first culture. The role includes a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone, and internet costs, plus bi‑annual destination summits for team meetups. What is the compensation for this CSM position at Chainguard? The role offers up to $125,000 base salary plus a performance bonus. Equity is also included in the form of stock options with a 10‑year exercise window. Do I need a technical background to apply for this role? A deep technical background is not strictly required, but hands‑on experience with containers, cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure), DevSecOps, or cybersecurity is strongly preferred. At minimum, domain knowledge in one of these areas is expected. What kind of customers will I be managing in this role? You will manage Enterprise‑level accounts, including Fortune 500 companies. Chainguard's existing customers include OpenAI, Snowflake, Canva, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Is prior startup experience required for this position? Prior early‑stage startup experience is listed as strongly preferred but not strictly required. However, the role demands an entrepreneurial mindset and comfort with building new processes from scratch on a new team.

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