Description
Description
As a Senior Manager of Customer Success Management, Technical, you will directly lead a team of Technical CSMs and serve as a people manager driving customer success across a portfolio of technically sophisticated enterprise accounts. You will combine strong technical acumen with leadership skills to ensure your team delivers on Salesforce's Signature Success Plan obligations while helping customers accelerate value and ROI from their Salesforce investment. Your team will deliver technical value through activities such as architecture reviews, security guidance and remediation support, and proactive recommendations of features and services aligned to each customer's desired business outcomes. You will build executive relationships with customer stakeholders and align internally with Account Executives and cross-functional Salesforce teams to proactively identify risks, drive adoption, and foster long-term customer loyalty. The end result is increased platform health, customer satisfaction, retention, and growth of Salesforce's footprint.
Position Description
For our customers who wish to get the most value out of Salesforce with an enterprise experience, they purchase our Signature Success Plan. Signature drives the right insights and people at the right time — which can make all the difference. When you have Signature, you unlock our deepest level of partnership, most skilled expertise, and tools to stay agile.
We are looking for a technically skilled frontline leader to join our CSM organization. This role is responsible for directly managing a team of 8–15 Technical CSMs, ensuring excellent delivery of Signature Success Plan entitlements, and driving measurable outcomes for customers. An ideal candidate has deep hands-on knowledge of Salesforce's platform and related technologies, combined with a passion for coaching and developing talent. The candidate is customer-centric, data-driven, and able to proactively surface and resolve risks across their portfolio. This is a country-level scope role with direct IC (Individual Contributor) management — not a leader of leaders.
Responsibilities
Directly manage a team of 8–15 Technical CSMs, serving as their primary people manager for performance, coaching, career development, and day-to-day guidance.
Recognize and cultivate team members' strengths; build psychologically safe, inclusive spaces that enable high performance and belonging.
Prioritize ongoing 1:1s and career development conversations, providing both positive and constructive feedback to support each team member's growth.
Partner with recruiting teams to hire top technical talent; support onboarding and enablement to ramp new hires effectively.
Ensure the team successfully delivers on all Signature Success Plan obligations and entitlements, maintaining high standards of quality and consistency.
Monitor and manage customer portfolio health using Customer Success Score, platform adoption data, and Salesforce Loyalty metrics; proactively identify and escalate high-risk accounts.
Support team members in navigating technical escalations and complex customer challenges, coordinating with senior leadership, engineering, and product teams as needed.
Foster executive relationships with covered customers, engaging with technical and business stakeholders to demonstrate the value of Signature and drive deeper Salesforce adoption.
Recommend and guide customers on solution paths aligned with their business objectives and key technical metrics; offer ideas to address root causes of business and technical challenges.
Support team in building strong partnerships with Account Executives, Renewals, Professional Services, and other Salesforce teams to align on customer strategy and growth opportunities.
Ensure CSM-to-customer allocation is compliant with the terms of each Signature deal structure; work with capacity planning peers to manage coverage.
Utilize internal Customer Success management platforms to run the business with data-driven rigor—tracking activities, health indicators, and renewal pipeline.
Be accountable for Signature Success Plan renewals and growth across assigned customer accounts.
Analyze performance data and customer feedback to surface trends, risks, and opportunities; share insights with Director-level and OU leadership.
Stay current on Salesforce platform capabilities, new products, AI/Agentforce innovations, and integration trends; enable the team to apply up-to-date technical knowledge in customer engagements.
Leverage technical expertise to guide the team in delivering platform assessments, architecture guidance, and adoption roadmaps tailored to each customer's environment.
Collaborate with global stakeholders in business-level English.
Preferred Qualifications and Skills
Technical Expertise: 7+ years of experience in enterprise software, Salesforce platform administration/development, solution architecture, cloud technologies, or systems integration — or equivalent experience in enterprise SaaS platforms (e.g., ServiceNow, SAP, Oracle, HubSpot, or similar).
3+ years in a people management or team leadership role within a customer success, technical account management, or professional services environment.
Deep hands-on knowledge of Salesforce platform (e.g., Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Platform, Data Cloud) and a solid understanding of Salesforce's broader product ecosystem including AI/Agentforce capabilities.
Strong grasp of integration patterns, APIs (REST/SOAP), data architecture, and enterprise IT infrastructure; ability to guide customers on technical best practices.
Demonstrated ability to recommend solution paths aligned with customer business goals, and to identify root causes of technical and business challenges.
Proven track record of coaching and developing technical talent; experience with performance management, career development planning, and creating inclusive team environments.
Ability to analyze customer health data, adoption metrics, and industry signals to make informed decisions and surface proactive recommendations.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to engage with technical teams, business stakeholders, and customer executives.
Salesforce certifications (e.g., Salesforce Administrator, Platform App Builder, Application Architect, or equivalent) are a strong plus.
Experience working with customers across technology-intensive industries (IT/software, manufacturing, retail, media, etc.) preferred.
Native Japanese proficiency required; business-level English preferred.
Competency Profile
The following competencies reflect the expected behaviors at the Senior Manager level, aligned to our People Leader Rubric:
Acting as a Business Advisor: Recommends solution paths aligned with customer needs and key metrics; demonstrates awareness of the customer's business model; offers ideas to address the root cause of customer business problems.
Planning and Prioritization: Demonstrates understanding of team priorities and maximizes progress toward goals; understands direction for the business and re-directs requests when appropriate; adopts and maintains a long-term perspective in customer engagements.
Business Acumen: Analyzes data and leverages insights in decision making; understands Salesforce's opportunity to add value; understands industry dynamics and differentiators from competition.
Expertise (Technical & Industry Knowledge): Stays informed of relevant technical and product knowledge across multiple Salesforce products and services; knows how and when to apply technical recommendations — both standard and customized — in line with larger customer goals; continually advances breadth and depth of technical and product knowledge.
Mobilizing Resources: Focuses team on responding to a broad range of customer issues; understands team's limitations and leverages broader Salesforce talent/functions where appropriate; ensures timely resolution of problems; delegates responsibility to ensure best use of time for self and team members.
Coaching & Mentoring: Recognizes and encourages strengths and potential of team; builds inclusive and psychologically safe spaces; practices active listening; prioritizes ongoing career development conversations with team.