WHAT TO KNOW

ONBOARDING MARKET

Onboarding & Implementation roles grew this year, but modestly compared to the rest of the market. CSM, Leadership, and Break Into Success roles all grew 80% or more.

I found 411 Onboarding & Implementation roles from January to September 2026, compared to 323 in the same months of 2025, up 27%. 2026 was ahead in 7 of 9 months; May and July came in below 2025. August (60 roles) and September (54) were the two biggest months for this category since I started tracking in 2025.

Onboarding is also harder to predict than CSM. There are always new CSM roles, with a little seasonality. Onboarding swings more, and the busy months don't repeat: 2025 peaked in May and July, and in 2026 those were the two months that came in below 2025. I haven't spotted the signal yet for who's going to be hiring a lot, or why.

Onboarding is becoming Implementation, which means it's becoming more technical. In 2025, 67% of the Onboarding roles I shared had Implementation in the title. In the first half of 2026 it was 76%, and from July to September it was 81%. Roles titled Onboarding fell from 23% to 13%.

The median salary for Onboarding roles went from $89K at the start of 2025 to $111K this quarter. Roles paying under $90K went from almost half to fewer than 1 in 5, and roles paying $125K or more went from about 1 in 9 to 1 in 3. This quarter, a third of the roles I shared had a senior title, like Senior, Lead, or Director, up from about 1 in 5.

And at the top, there are some very highly paid Onboarding roles. It's not every week, but a few times a month I share a strategic or technical Implementation role paying $150K or more. That's 46 roles so far this year, at least 3 every month, and a few topped $200K.

This category is where I put roles that get new customers set up and live: Onboarding, Implementation, and Deployment roles, plus project management roles focused on customer launches.

The median Onboarding & Implementation salary is $111,443 for the roles I shared from July to September 2026.

This category is kind of a grab bag. All levels of individual contributor roles end up here, from specialists to directors, so there isn't one salary range or one years-of-experience requirement. Here's how the roles I shared from July to September broke down:

These roles are perfect for experienced Implementation Managers, Onboarding Specialists, or CSMs who love the start of the customer journey. This is also a role where highly experienced project managers and consultants could move into Customer Success or SaaS.

Things you need to know if you're targeting Onboarding & Implementation roles

A note on this data. Qualitative insights are based on a sample of 42 Onboarding & Implementation job descriptions pulled in September 2026. Years of experience by salary come from the 33 of those that list years, so treat them as a guide. Percentages are rounded and meant to show patterns, not exact counts.

Every quarter I grab the data of all jobs shared across the Job Drops and use it to inform how I’m thinking about the broader job market for Customer Success. In June, I presented the report in a live webinar. Today, I’m making the full report available to everyone.

I’m Nicole St. Germain, I’m a former Director of Customer Success and I run Customer Success Jobs, a newsletter and community for Customer Success job seekers.

Every week I share ~100 curated new jobs in Customer Success with my subscribers. I save every job I share into a database, and use it to calculate volume, salary ranges, and analyze the text of the job descriptions to understand what companies are looking for when they hire for Customer Success.

I only share US-based, remote, and salary-transparent jobs, which means that this data is not meant to be comprehensive, but a snapshot of the quality jobs on the market, and how that may be changing over time.

You can read more about my methodology in the State of the Customer Success Job Market, Fall 2026.

A Job Drop is the email I send 2x a week to my Subscribers. On Tuesday, I share all roles that were posted in the last 5 days, and on Thursday I share all roles that were posted in the last 24 hours.

Each Job Drop is broken up into categories across Customer Success: Mid-Career CSM, SMB & Digital CSM, Senior CSM, Strategic CSM, Associate, Break Into Success, Manager of Customer Success, Director & Head of Customer Success, VP of Customer Success, Operations, and Onboarding & Implementation.

Each Job Drop also has a section for roles based in Canada and Globally, but these roles are not included in this report or analysis.

Thursday’s Job Drops are free for all subscribers, and Tuesdays are for Insider subscribers only. Data shared in this report comes from all Job Drops.

This report covers Onboarding & Implementation roles. A role counts as Onboarding & Implementation when its main job is getting new customers set up and live on the product, through onboarding, implementation, configuration or deployment.

FALL 2026 REPORT

This is part of the State of the Customer Success Job Market, Fall 2026. Here's where to find the rest.

Every week I share ~100 curated new jobs in Customer Success with my subscribers, all US-based, remote, and salary-transparent.