Strategic Customer Success Manager - Identity Platform

Descope; United States; On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

401k with company match

Internet allowance

Office lunches

Professional development budget

Job summary

Descope is seeking a Customer Success Manager to own a diverse book of business across enterprise and mid-market customers, partnering with CS Engineers to drive adoption, retention, and expansion from onboarding through renewal.

You will manage executive relationships, conduct business reviews, monitor health signals, and coordinate with sales, product, and support to ensure value delivery and renewals. A background in SaaS, developer tooling, and security is preferred.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in a customer-facing post-sales role, with at least 3+ years in CSM.
• Experience managing diverse books of business across enterprise and commercial accounts.
• Proven track record of hitting retention/expansion targets in SaaS.
• Background in developer tooling, security, identity/access management, or infrastructure software preferred.

Responsibilities

• Own a portfolio of customers and act as trusted advisor through lifecycle.
• Lead onboarding projects for large enterprise customers from kickoff to value milestones.
• Drive product adoption, retention, and expansion by aligning to customer goals.
• Conduct regular business reviews and surface opportunities for growth.
• Collaborate with Sales, Product, and Support to resolve escalations and ensure success.

Skills

Executive presence

Analytical

Customer relationship

Renewals & retention

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Gainsight

ChurnZero

Totango

Salesforce

HubSpot

BI tools

Job description

Descope is a developer-first identity provider for customers, partners, and AI agents. Our drag-and-drop approach to identity enables developers to easily deploy authentication, MFA, SSO, and MCP/AI agent authentication without writing custom code.

Descope is trusted by over 1000 organizations in production, including GoFundMe, Databricks, GoodRx, Linktree, and You.com. The company has $88M in seed funding led by Lightspeed and Notable Capital.

We're "descoping" authentication plumbing from developers' daily lives while helping organizations turn identity into a business enabler. Come join us!

What You’ll Do:

As a Descope Customer Success Manager, you'll join our growing Customer Success team and own a book of business across enterprise and mid-market SMB customers. You'll partner closely with our Customer Success Engineers to drive adoption, retention, and expansion, acting as the trusted advisor customers rely on from onboarding through renewal.

You'll work within an established CS motion — tiered engagement, playbooks, and health tracking — and help sharpen it as we scale. We're looking for someone who brings strong opinions on what great customer success looks like and isn't afraid to improve how we do things.

The right candidate is equal parts operator and relationship builder: someone who can roll up their sleeves, manage a diverse book of business, and consistently deliver measurable outcomes for their customers.

Customer Ownership

• Serve as the primary customer-success relationship owner for a portfolio of customers across segments, acting as their trusted advisor throughout the full customer lifecycle
• Orchestrate complex onboarding projects for large enterprise customers, and drive their deployment from kick-off meeting to first value milestone
• Drive product adoption, retention, and expansion by deeply understanding each customer's business goals and aligning Descope's solutions to their desired outcomes
• Conduct regular business reviews (EBRs/QBRs) with key stakeholders, surfacing value delivered and identifying opportunities for growth
• Proactively monitor customer health signals — usage trends, support activity, engagement levels — and intervene early to address risks before they escalate to churn
• Own escalation management for your accounts: serve as the internal quarterback for customer-facing issues, coordinating with engineering, product, and support to drive timely resolution and communicate clearly with the customer
• Build strong relationships across multiple levels of customer organizations, from day-to-day practitioners to executive sponsors
• Own renewal readiness for your book, partnering with Sales to forecast accurately and de-risk renewals well ahead of term dates

Operational Excellence

• Execute against Descope's engagement model and CS playbooks for onboarding, adoption, expansion, renewal, and at-risk intervention
• Maintain accurate, up-to-date account data, success plans, and health scores in our CRM and CS tooling
• Track and report on key success metrics for your book — NRR, GRR, CSAT, time-to-value, product adoption
• Contribute to the continuous improvement of CS playbooks, templates, and processes, sharing what's working (and what isn't) with the broader team
• Partner with Sales on pre-sales to post-sales handoffs, ensuring customer goals and commitments are clearly captured and acted on

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Act as the voice of the customer internally — synthesizing feedback from your book of business and advocating for product improvements, documentation gaps, and support enhancements
• Work closely with the Customer Success Engineer team to triage technical escalations and ensure customers receive the right level of technical support at the right time
• Collaborate with Sales and Marketing to identify expansion opportunities, support renewal motions, and contribute to customer case studies and advocacy programs
• Partner with Product to share customer insights, influence roadmap prioritization, and ensure customers are informed of relevant upcoming capabilities

What We’re Looking For:

Experience

• 5+ years in a customer-facing post-sales role, with at least 3+ years specifically in Customer Success Management (CSM, Strategic Account Manager, or equivalent)
• Demonstrated experience managing a diverse book of business across customer segments, including enterprise and commercial accounts
• Proven track record of hitting or exceeding retention and expansion targets (NRR, GRR) in a SaaS environment
• Background in developer tooling, security, identity/access management, or infrastructure software strongly preferred

Skills

• Strong executive presence and communication skills; able to engage credibly with both technical practitioners and C-level stakeholders
• Analytical and data-driven: comfortable interpreting health dashboards, forecasting churn risk, and making decisions based on metrics
• Skilled at managing difficult conversations — renewals, escalations, dissatisfied customers — with empathy, professionalism, and clear follow-through
• Highly organized with the ability to manage multiple concurrent customer engagements without dropping the ball
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving startup environment where priorities shift, and good judgment matters more than a rulebook

Technical Aptitude & Nice to Have:

• Sufficient technical fluency to understand customer implementation questions, engage meaningfully with engineering contacts, and partner effectively with the Customer Success Engineer team. Deep technical expertise is not required, since the CSE function covers it
• Familiarity with authentication and identity concepts (OAuth, OIDC, SAML, MFA, SSO) is a strong plus, as is a background in CIAM, developer platforms, or security SaaS
• Familiarity with compliance and security standards relevant to customer conversations (SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA)
• Experience with CS tooling (Gainsight, ChurnZero, Totango, or similar), CRM platforms (Salesforce or HubSpot), and BI/reporting tools
• Experience contributing to CS playbooks, health scoring, or process improvements beyond your own book
• Experience at an early- or growth-stage startup
• Health, sorted: Medical, dental, and vision with strong coverage and flexible HSA and FSA options
• Feel good, actually: Mental health support and wellness resources when you need them
• Future you will thank you: 401k plan with employer support to help you build long term
• More money in your pocket: Tax advantaged benefits for healthcare and dependent care
• Life happens, and we make space for it: maternity leave designed to support you when it matters most.
• Stay connected: Monthly internet allowance to support your work from anywhere
• Lunch is on us: Paid lunches when you’re working from the office
• Keep growing: Budget and opportunities for personal development, including courses and conferences

Descope is an equal opportunity employer. We hire people based on their skills and impact, nothing else. We’re committed to a fair and transparent process across every stage of employment.

Base salary range: $110,000 to $140,00

Final offer will depend on experience, skills, location, and overall market data. We also consider leveling, scope, and internal equity to make sure offers are fair and consistent.