The AI sector continues its impressive growth trajectory in 2025, and as this market matures it is creating a greater demand within the industry for senior-level Customer Success (CS) candidates that will ensure retention and help scale up revenue. As we have witnessed throughout our partnerships with artificial intelligence companies, the CS and account management talent landscape has gone through an upheaval since 2024, propelled by the increasing enterprise adoption of next-generation AI solutions.
In this blog, we will explore the current state of hiring for Customer Success and Account Manager roles in the artificial intelligence industry for 2025, examining how trends have evolved from the previous year, analyzing patterns in current job requirements and discussing effective recruitment strategies:
Looking Back: Customer Success Recruitment in 2024
Several trends dominated go-to-market (GTM) and CS recruitment in 2024, as well as AI hiring, with many of these overlapping between each subsector of tech. Here are the biggest of the most common patterns we saw:
Selective Hiring Approach
Similar to trends we observed in sales recruitment, technology companies in 2024 were being highly selective in their Customer Success Manager (CSM) hiring. Rather than building large teams of junior or mid-level CS professionals, many organizations focused on sourcing a few highly experienced candidates who were already familiar with the underlying tech of their solutions and would take less time to ramp up for their roles.
Technical Knowledge Becoming Essential
In 2024, we observed emerging artificial intelligence startups prioritizing technical knowledge when hiring for GTM roles. This included for both sales and customer success jobs, where just as in the rest of tech, AI companies focused on finding their right fit technical unicorns that could engage with clients and prospects in technology as well as business case questions.
Limited Talent Pool Challenges
In light of the previous trends, artificial intelligence startups understandably saw more challenges for filling GTM jobs with more qualified candidates that brought the unicorn experience and sales motion alignment they sought. Interview-to-placement rates trended much lower than with other subsectors of SaaS, usually by at least 10%.
Current Trends: Customer Success in AI for 2025
As we progress through 2025, the previous trends have continued to evolve while new developments throughout the AI industry have emerged, making customer success hiring in this space more complex and dynamic:
Customer Success Specialists
Continuing from the call for more experienced CS professionals, many artificial intelligence companies are increasingly seeking out candidates that can fill in more specialist roles. These include “hybrid” versions of traditional titles, such as those that bring engineering or other technical knowledge to customer success and account management. Other emerging jobs are those with greater focus on specific CS functions, such as contract renewals, or on particular markets like enterprise clients.
Technical Experience as a Baseline Requirement
Technical knowledge was already a priority back in 2023 to 2024, but in 2025 it is increasingly a core requirement for customer success or account management titles in AI. Many job descriptions list must-haves like:
- Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Familiarity with containerization technologies like Kubernetes
- Understanding of authentication and security systems
- Experience with data platforms and analytics tools
- Programming knowledge (particularly Python)
This trend represents a transition from purely relationship-focused CS responsibilities to a mixed set that balances understanding technical and business needs. Many of these also are also progressively overlapping with critical support functions (particularly for larger client accounts), such as:
- Ensuring successful implementation
- Providing technical guidance for scaling AI-powered features
- Supporting customer innovations
Enterprise Customer Success Focus
Another trend carrying over from the rest of the tech sector into the artificial intelligence industry is a renewed focus on securing enterprise-sized clients. For customer success hiring, this means prioritizing recruitment for experienced Enterprise CSMs that have a history of handling these types of accounts. Beyond simply sourcing ECSMs, however, many AI companies are taking it a step further and refining their account management to align with the greater importance and needs of enterprise customers, including:
- Dedicated resources for higher-value accounts
- Tiered service models aligned with contract size
- Specialized teams for strategic customers
- Longer and more complex engagement lifecycles
We are also seeing greater involvement and coordination between account managers and technical sales teams as part of enterprise-oriented customer success. Many firms are specifically seeking Enterprise CSM candidates who have worked with product or engineering teams previously, reflecting the multi-layered process for supporting enterprise accounts.
Top Customer Success & Account Manager Jobs in AI
Here are the top in-demand customer success and account management jobs we found for the AI industry in 2025:
Technical Account Managers
Technical Account Managers have emerged as critical players in the customer success ecosystem for AI, bridging the gap between technical implementation and business outcomes.
Key requirements typically include:
- 7+ years in customer-facing technical roles
- Strong cloud platform and infrastructure knowledge
- Experience with authentication systems and Kubernetes
- Ability to engage with technical and business stakeholders
Strategic Customer Success Managers
Strategic CSMs focus on enterprise accounts and executive-level engagement, serving as trusted advisors to key stakeholders and helping clients maximize value from their AI investment while identifying new opportunities for growth.
Common requirements include:
- 10+ years in account management or customer success
- Experience supporting organizations in their AI maturity curve
- Strong communication and presentation skills
- Ability to engage with stakeholders at all levels
Customer Success Engineers
Customer Success Engineers provide the technical expertise needed to ensure successful implementation and adoption of AI platforms, working closely with CS and product teams to resolve issues, optimize solutions and drive adoption.
Typical requirements include:
- Programming experience (particularly Python)
- Familiarity with ML frameworks and tools
- Cloud infrastructure knowledge
- Technical troubleshooting abilities
Renewals/Account Managers
With the growing importance of retention and expansion revenue, dedicated Renewals Managers and Account Managers are increasingly common in AI organizations.
These roles typically require:
- Experience with contract renewals and negotiations
- Ability to identify expansion opportunities
- Proactive risk mitigation strategies
- Strong commercial acumen
How Recruitment as a Service Addresses CS Hiring Challenges
Building effective customer success teams is going to remain a significant challenge for AI companies for the rest of 2025, with several factors contributing to recruitment difficulties:
- Specialized talent requirements – The combination of technical expertise and customer relationship skills required for AI Customer Success roles creates a naturally limited talent pool.
- Competitive talent market – The continued growth of the AI sector has intensified competition for qualified CS professionals.
- Recruitment scalability – Internal talent acquisition teams often lack the bandwidth or specialized networks to efficiently source qualified CS candidates.
The RaaS Advantage for Customer Success Hiring in AI
At Betts Recruiting, we have developed our Recruitment as a Service (RaaS) model specifically to address the hiring challenges faced by technology companies looking to scale, including those in the AI industry. Our RaaS approach offers several key benefits for organizations recruiting CS talent:
- Access to pre-vetted candidates: Our Betts Connect platform hosts a diverse pool of talent for CS, sales, marketing, and operational roles, with AI-powered matching to identify the right candidates for specific requirements
- Subscription-based model: Unlike traditional recruiters who charge per placement, our subscription model allows unlimited hires at a predictable cost
- Dedicated recruitment support: Clients receive support from recruiters experienced in hiring for technical and customer-facing roles
- Scalable hiring process: The RaaS model scales efficiently with your hiring needs, whether you are making a few strategic hires or building an entire team
Build Your Customer Success Team for AI with Betts
The evolution from generalist CS professionals to specialized technical customer success teams signals a maturing AI industry with increasingly sophisticated engagement approaches, which means more competition for unicorn candidates. RaaS with Betts gives you access to the experienced talent you need along with our expert services and guidance at a fraction of traditional agency costs.
Contact Betts here to learn how our Recruitment as a Service can help you build the Customer Success team you need to propel your AI startup to its next stage of growth.