Customer Success Engineer

Customer Success Engineer

Element451 is the AI-native CRM and agent platform built for higher education. As we scale, we're building the technical layer behind Customer Success—so AM's can move faster, escalations resolve quicker, and customers get confident answers.

As a Customer Success Engineer, you operate like a post-sale Solutions Engineer embedded in CS. You'll bring technical depth to complex customer questions, triage and resolve escalations before they hit Engineering, and ensure clean, well-documented handoffs from Implementation.

What You'll Own

Implementation-to-CS Handoff Quality

• The handoff from Implementation to CS is one of the highest-risk moments in a customer's lifecycle. Your job is to make sure it's not a black box.
• Partner with Implementation at the close of onboarding to review handoff artifacts — configuration summaries, integration overviews, known issues, open items, key workflows and flag anything that needs resolution before CS takes full ownership
• Participate in handoff calls when complexity warrants it, ensuring the receiving AM understands what was built, why, and what to watch for in the first 30–90 days
• Proactively identify configuration risks or adoption blockers that could become retention issues and escalate them to the right internal owners before they surface as customer problems

AM Technical Enablement

• This is the heart of the role. Your goal is not to be the hero on every escalation — it's to make the CS team technically capable enough that fewer escalations happen at all.
• Serve as the primary technical resource for the AM team: the first stop for platform questions, configuration issues, workflow logic, reporting questions, and integration-related troubleshooting.
• Join customer calls when technical depth materially changes the outcome — QBRs, escalations, complex workflow discussions, AI strategy sessions, platform design conversations
• Coach AM's on platform fundamentals, AI agent logic, and integration concepts so they can independently handle more complexity over time
• Build and maintain internal enablement assets: troubleshooting guides, FAQs, how-it-works explainers, and repeatable patterns that raise the technical floor across the CS org

Technical Discovery & Solutioning

• Post-go-live, customers evolve. New workflows get requested, governance changes, reporting needs shift, AI use cases emerge. You're the person who can actually figure out what they need and what to do about it.
• Lead technical discovery on post-go-live needs and translate vague pain into concrete requirements and a recommended approach
• Provide solution options with clear tradeoffs — configuration approach, workflow design, data implications, effort and risk — so AMs and customers can make decisions confidently
• Facilitate technical working sessions with Enrollment Ops and IT stakeholders to unblock decisions, clarify requirements, and align on next steps
• Produce lightweight solution artifacts — requirements summary, proposed approach, dependencies, risks, definition of done — that enable clean execution by the right internal team.
• Own post-go-live technical solutioning across two tiers. Tier 1 — configuration, troubleshooting, workflow guidance: own and deliver directly. Tier 2 — new integrations, significant build, or complex projects: lead discovery, package the scope, and hand to PS for execution. For Tier 2, coordinate with Sales on timing before anything is communicated to the customer. Act as the triage point for post-go-live needs flagged by AMs — assess whether the need is Tier 1 or Tier 2 and route accordingly."

Escalation Triage & Resolution

• When things break, AMs need to know someone is on it. That's you.
• Own technical escalations from CS: diagnose platform, configuration, and workflow issues, identify root cause, and drive resolution — often without Engineering involvement
• Coordinate with Support and Engineering on issues that require product-level investigation; translate technical findings into clear updates so AMs can keep customers informed without getting lost in the weeds
• Establish a clear escalation operating rhythm — intake, prioritization, expectations, communication norms — so AMs know what to expect and trust the process
• Track recurring escalation themes and surface them as structured signals to Product, Support, and Implementation — patterns are roadmap input, not just tickets

Platform Fluency & Best Practices

• Stay current on releases and proactively brief the CS team on what changed, what matters, and how to use it with customers
• Maintain deep fluency across Element451: CRM configuration, student journey logic, AI agent behavior, communication workflows, application management, and reporting
• Develop and document best-practice patterns for common higher ed use cases — segmentation design, journey architecture, communication cadence, governance models — to support AM conversations and QBR recommendations

Cross-Functional Contribution

• Act as a connector across CS, Implementation, Support, and Product — translating real customer friction into actionable internal feedback
• Help CS leadership identify systemic issues across the portfolio — configuration drift, adoption gaps, recurring confusion — and propose fixes that scale
• Contribute to a durable knowledge base: document what you learn, standardize what you solve, and reduce the cost of every future escalation

AM & CSE Relationship:

The AM owns the client. The CSE owns the technical layer behind the client. In practice, the CSE supports from behind — and steps into client conversations when technical depth is needed. The long-term goal is for AMs to bring the CSE in for genuinely complex situations, not routine questions, because you've raised the technical capability of the whole team.

What You'll Need

• 4–7 years in a technical, customer-facing role in B2B SaaS — Customer Success Engineer, Technical Account Manager, Solutions Consultant, or an implementation-adjacent CS role
• Direct experience with a higher education CRM and the workflows it supports — Element451, Slate, Salesforce Education Cloud, Ellucian CRM Advance, TargetX, or similar strongly preferred
• Strong technical discovery skills: you can move from vague pain to concrete requirements to a recommended approach without losing the room
• Deep command of CRM configuration thinking: objects and fields, segmentation logic, workflow and journey design, and reporting implications
• Enough integration and API literacy to diagnose symptoms, speak credibly with IT teams, and understand what's happening in a broken data sync — you don't need to build integrations, but you must understand them
• Ability to lead technical working sessions with Enrollment Ops and IT, align stakeholders on next steps, and translate outcomes back to the AM team clearly
• Excellent communicator who can make technical concepts accessible to non-technical audiences — AMs and institutional administrators alike — without losing precision
• Coaching mindset: you get energy from making the people around you more capable, building reusable assets, and reducing dependency over time
• High ownership and reliability across a shared portfolio — when a AM escalates something to you, they trust it will get handled