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The differences between sales engineers and customer success managers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become a sales engineer, becoming a customer success manager takes usually requires 6-8 years. Additionally, a customer success manager has an average salary of $93,820, which is higher than the $93,727 average annual salary of a sales engineer.
The top three skills for a sales engineer include pre sales, customer service and sales process. The most important skills for a customer success manager are client facing, cloud, and account management.
| Sales Engineer | Customer Success Manager | |
| Yearly salary | $93,727 | $93,820 |
| Hourly rate | $45.06 | $45.11 |
| Growth rate | 6% | 5% |
| Number of jobs | 132,324 | 95,053 |
| Job satisfaction | 5 | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 74% | Bachelor's Degree, 78% |
| Average age | 44 | 46 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 8 |
A sales engineer is responsible for assisting customers with their technical equipment and advanced scientific product needs. Sales engineers must have excellent knowledge of the scientific processes and component functions of the products they're selling to deliver presentations and orient the customers. Sales engineers' duties also include troubleshooting, identifying product defects, and upgrading systems for better optimization. They are also responsible for analyzing cost estimates documents, performing adjustments as needed, process payments, arranging deliveries, and settling customers' complaints by replacing damaged items or doing refunds.
A customer success manager works to understand repeat customers and prioritize their long-term needs. Primarily, they manage the customer relationship and give them prompt value propositions. They act as mentors to customers by educating them about the sales process and ensure efficient transaction processing. Their tasks include advocating for the company, onboarding customers to the products, follow-up on renewals, and encouraging cross-sells and upsells. Additionally, they build relationships with the customer and the support team as well as advocating customers' needs.
Sales engineers and customer success managers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Sales Engineer | Customer Success Manager | |
| Average salary | $93,727 | $93,820 |
| Salary range | Between $66,000 And $132,000 | Between $61,000 And $142,000 |
| Highest paying City | Washington, DC | Redwood City, CA |
| Highest paying state | Virginia | California |
| Best paying company | Meta | VMware |
| Best paying industry | Technology | Technology |
There are a few differences between a sales engineer and a customer success manager in terms of educational background:
| Sales Engineer | Customer Success Manager | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 74% | Bachelor's Degree, 78% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | Northwestern University | University of Pennsylvania |
Here are the differences between sales engineers' and customer success managers' demographics:
| Sales Engineer | Customer Success Manager | |
| Average age | 44 | 46 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 90.1% Female, 9.9% | Male, 54.9% Female, 45.1% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 1.7% Unknown, 6.2% Hispanic or Latino, 8.0% Asian, 7.1% White, 76.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% | Black or African American, 3.2% Unknown, 4.4% Hispanic or Latino, 9.8% Asian, 4.1% White, 78.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 7% | 7% |