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How many levels do customer success ladders have?

Data collected on

We read 2 customer success ladders that companies publish themselves and counted their levels. The two ladders have 4 and 5 levels for customer success managers who do not manage people. Every source is linked below, and the data is free to download.

Key findings

  • The two ladders have 4 and 5 levels.
  • Both ladders publish a separate track for managers. Only 1 says where it starts; the table shows which.

How many levels customer success ladders have

Each bar is the number of ladders with that many levels for customer success managers who do not manage people.

  • 4 levels1 ladder
  • 5 levels1 ladder

Download the data

One row per ladder: its name, who publishes it, the source link, the number of levels, the level names, the manager track and the step it starts at.

Download the CSV

Both ladders

Levels for customer success managers who do not manage people, lowest first, as each publisher names them.
LadderLevelsLevel namesManager track
GitLab4
  1. Associate Customer Success Manager
  2. Customer Success Manager
  3. Senior Customer Success Manager
  4. Staff Customer Success Manager
Separate; start not stated
Sourcegraph5
  1. IC1
  2. IC2
  3. IC3
  4. IC4
  5. IC5
Separate, from step 3 (level with IC3)

How we did it

We read 2 customer success ladders that companies publish themselves, on their own sites, GitHub or shared documents, and kept only those whose levels we could read as text. We left out templates written by individuals and ladders only for support or helpdesk teams, sales teams or customer success operations.

We found only two employers that publish a customer success ladder openly, so this study has just two ladders. One of them, Sourcegraph’s, is for technical advisors, which is technical customer success.

Levels are the steps a customer success manager can climb without managing people, lowest first. Interns and trainees are left out. When a ladder splits one title into numbered steps, each with its own expectations, each step counts. Pay bands inside one level do not. A level above both tracks that the ladder does not open to individual contributors is not counted.

The manager track starts where the ladder puts its first people-manager role: the same band or level number, the same row of its table, or the step where it says the tracks split. When that role sits above the top level, it counts as the next step up. When a ladder has a manager track but does not place it, we do not guess.

This is a sample of the ladders people chose to publish, from two software companies, and some are several years old. It shows what public ladders look like, not what every company does.

We store only public facts: how many levels a ladder has, what the levels are called and where the manager track starts. Each ladder belongs to its publisher, so follow the links for the full text. None of them has reviewed or endorsed this study, and Competrace is not affiliated with them.

Spotted a mistake, or a public ladder we missed? Email support@competrace.com with the link, and we will update the data.

See levels with their skills

The study counts levels. To see what each level needs, browse our customer success career path with the skills each level expects, or read what a career ladder is.

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