60-Second Summary
A Customer Success Engineer acts as the technical bridge between customers, customer-facing teams, and developers. This story describes joining Leadfeeder, co-creating the role, and growing through hands-on technical onboarding, integrations work, and internal training.
Key takeaway: The role blends technical onboarding (installing tracking, calling APIs, integrations) with customer-facing support and internal training, enabling faster issue resolution and better cross-team communication.
Standout strategies & tactics: Co-create the position to match business needs, shadow and collaborate closely with dev teams to learn product internals, run internal trainings to translate technical concepts for non-technical colleagues, and validate skills via practical interviews (e.g., live API coding).
Real-world lessons & frameworks: The "bridge" framework—acting as an interpreter between engineering and customers—scales support and product development. Invest in domain skills (CRMs, GDPR, APIs) and empathy-driven communication to succeed in remote-first SaaS teams.
Practical outcomes & tips: Improve technical literacy (read code, call APIs, learn CRMs), use targeted job searches (e.g., LinkedIn) for hybrid roles, and prioritize empathy and cross-team training to grow into leadership while gaining remote flexibility.
*This summary was created with AI assistance, using our original content.
If so, here's my story of how I joined and became the “bridge” between Leadfeeder customers and the company's developers.
What is a customer success engineer?
A Customer Success Engineer manages the customer-facing technical aspects of onboarding and everyday processes. For example, at Leadfeeder, I help install the website visitor tracking product, answer customer questions, resolve issues, and provide training to internal colleagues.
Why did I become a customer success engineer?
Last year, around this time, I started looking for a new job.
My top “wants” were:
1) Tech industry (I changed my career from law to tech)
2) Challenging enough to keep me interested
3) Half-technical and half people/customers-facing role
4) Fully remote
I posted these ideas on LinkedIn and found many suitable positions. However, one of them stood out to me: Customer Success Engineering at Leadfeeder.
There were a lot of requirements for this job - be able to read code, call an API, have some experience coding, have an understanding of CRMs like Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Dynamics, have worked with Mailchimp and Active Campaign, and many more, while also being outgoing and comfortable to do client calls to help install Leadfeeder product, answer questions of and provide training to client-facing colleagues.
In exchange, I would be able to work from anywhere in the world if I cover the European time zone for a salary that would allow me to do that. I applied for this position, and within a couple of days, I had my first interview, where I learned it was a completely new position I could co-create.
Exactly the challenge I was looking for. Two weeks and four interviews later (including a live API calling coding interview), I was hired and started my Leadfeeder journey on June 1st, 2021.
The idea for the position was to serve as a “bridge” between developers and customer-facing colleagues. So I started building the bridge, and until today, whenever someone asked me what I do for a living, I told them I was a bridge.
And let me tell you, it is a great conversation starter.
How was my learning period at Leadfeeder?
I started to work with the dev teams to understand the Leadfeeder product and its integrations. All the developers have been super friendly, helpful, and patient, which has allowed me to progress fast in my “bridge” career.
I used the technical knowledge I gained from the developers with my business-facing colleagues and clients. I answered their questions as an additional layer of support and participated in client calls to help them install the product or resolve integration issues. I also started participating in the development of new products, albeit not by coding.
When I felt comfortable with the main Leadfeeder Website Visitors product, which is, by the way, super awesome and you should try it out yourself 😆, I started running training for my business colleagues so they could also obtain a better technical understanding of the Leadfeeder products in less technical jargon.
What does being a Customer Success Engineer look like?
During my first year at Leadfeeder, I learned to understand the entire lifecycle of a SaaS product. I was supported by Leadfeeder to learn as much as possible, including doing my CIPP/E GDPR training and certification, as well as my current Salesforce and other CRM in-depth training.
Looking back, I believe I co-created my position of Customer Success Engineer into a truly useful role in intra-team communication.
Why is being a Customer Success Engineer awesome?
Working for Leadfeeder not only helped me grow my career as a Customer Success Engineer but also helped me develop personally. I learned from my business colleagues how to be more empathetic toward our clients and how to make them heard and taken care of, because, a lot of times, that is exactly what the people working for our customers (companies) need to solve their technical problems.
I also started learning how to be a good leader, which, especially in a remote-first company, can be difficult.
On top of that, I have gained the freedom I dreamt about and for which I changed my career. I can now live anywhere in the world, and I am taking advantage of it.
I also gained colleagues all over the world who are more like friends — I hope to visit some of them one of these days.
CMO
Jillian Als is Chief Marketing Officer at Leadfeeder and a B2B SaaS marketing executive with nearly two decades of experience leading global go-to-market teams. She specializes in revenue-driven marketing strategy, demand generation, and aligning marketing and sales organizations.
Throughout her career, Jillian has helped SaaS companies scale marketing-sourced revenue and build high-performing marketing teams across international markets. Her leadership experience shapes her perspective on marketing strategy, attribution, and the systems modern revenue teams use to drive sustainable growth.
