Ask HN: Transitioning to a Solutions Engineer / Sales Engineer

I made this transition about 8 years into my career, moving from a software engineer specializing in performance to an OEM sales engineer customizing a product to hit a market’s performance needs. Some of the most enjoyable time of my career. Unfortunately, the sales people treat you as they’re inferior. Simply a tool in their bag of tricks to make their sale. As your innovation doubles their sales, somehow it was their amazing sales capabilities instead…

I eventually transitioned to an end customer sales engineer role, and found myself demoing a product that was effectively shrink wrapped software, searching for customer fit. In those roles it’s feast or famine, and current economy suggests it’s going to be famine for a few years. I’d recommend against making the transition for a couple years especially in these end customer positions.

I’m now back on the development side of the house, and my view of the product development is forever changed. While I’m looking for innovation to immediately improve customer experience, my colleagues are focused on ivory tower solutions that will make their own lives easier in 2 years. I feel I’m more aligned with what our executives want to achieve for our customers and business.

Although I recommend the experience in your career, don’t do it now unless you bring a unique skillset to the role which is a key differentiator for the product.

Sales doesn't really have meaningful levels, in my experience (many years in engineering sales but not "tech"). Senior/staff/principle engineers do a lot more than just code, right? Lots of high level decisions, strategy, coordination between teams, mentoring, etc... Sales engineers pretty much just... sell. As you gain experience, you will make more sales. Your income will increase from commission, not from new titles or responsibilities.

A good sales engineer can make a lot of money. Sales is one of the few roles where there is a direct link between compensation and performance. The more you sell, the more you make. Make sure that when you are interviewing for sales positions you discuss their commission structure in depth. Don't work for anyone who isn't willing to pay you a huge amount of money for making a huge number of sales.

I made this same move about a year ago. Went from an engineer manager (managing 20ish people) to a Solutions Engineer, and got the same pay (base salary was a dash higher, total comp was a dash lower because of the bonus structure I had been a manager at the time). It'll work itself out after one raise, so I'm not too worried. I enjoy this job a lot more than engineering all day or managing all day, it's been a great move.

What worked for me was I had industry-specific non-technical knowledge. I had come from managing an online virtual events software team and took a job at a WebRTC vendor. Since I had been on the CUSTOMER side before with another similar vendor, I knew exactly how their customers felt. Even though I didn't have direct experience selling the same product, the company I now worked at loved that I had experience on the buying side of it.

I recommend looking at some of the vendors you already work with, seeing which one interests you, and applying to work with them or at one of their competitors (e.g. if you work with AWS stuff, apply at AWS, GCP, and Azure). Make sure you LIKE THE PRODUCT and BELIEVE IN IT or else you'll have a tough time. It's unlike a "normal" software engineering job where you can have fun on just the tech and not necessarily care about the product, when you're helping on the sales side and don't believe in what you're helping to sell its WAY TOUGHER. I've "drank the kool-aid" on WebRTC and streaming video and have a lot of conviction when it comes to helping customers switch off from their other vendor to us.

Be picky and patient with interviewing for this. Even more so than a normal engineering role. Don't be afraid to reach out to companies you really dig even if they don't have an open role at the time. In my experience, the interview process for this kind of a role was a lot more "people/personality" heavy rather than just pure tech-heavy because they know they're putting you in front of customers. They don't mind if you don't know everything because you can always ask an engineer on the product team for help, but they do mind if you don't have above-average social skills. My presentation skills are excellent because I've taken some public speaking classes and do stand-up comedy 2-3 times a week for fun, which was also a big help.

I think from your position a CTO level role at a smaller company led by mature people would be pefect. Make sure they have atleast a couple of dedicated sales people and the CEO is technical or technically competent.

Small company CTOs tend to do sales engineering and moreover you can apply your existing work experience in managing a technical team and don't need to make a transition. If you can try to discuss equity and/or sales commission as well.

Presuming that this role is partnering with a sales person or going apart yourself on sales calls and working sales tenders/RFPs and the main role is to close sales (directly or indirectly), then:

> 1) Would love it if someone can share similar moves - how did you go about it, how has it worked out and tips if any ?

I did this more than 10 years ago after about 6-7 years of hands-on programming work. It's a great move. I'm very introverted and don't enjoy talking to people, but the job was a good fit because I somehow can articulate with customers (I just don't like socializing with them, so a pure sales role was out for me). It's a great opportunity to hone soft skills, and felt like a good point for me to understand the business side of software (e.g. every one talks value proposition, but you don't really need to understand it until you try to sell it).

> 2) How does the levelling work ? If I need to change roles would I have to take a downgrade or a paycut ? About Staff Engineer level now.

I supposed it's based a lot on organization, but I don't think there is a real path to an equivalent to Staff Engineer in technical sales. As an aside: you made Staff Engineer after 10 years? What's next? :)

> 3) Any specific skillsets or certifications I should pick up ? I am pretty sure if given an interview I can take it from there, but seems hard to get into a field without experience at a senior-ish level.

* persuasion skills * demo skills * presentation * domain knowledge * whatever skill it takes to respond to RFPs * negotiation * quick to whip up demos * Learn to say "no, but" or "not yet, but"

Nothing really specific to technical sales actually

Don’t do it right now.

Your level will be meaningless. Nobody in sales cares about your experience unless you’re an industry “thought leader” pumping out articles, podcasts and keynotes.

More likely than not you’ll start as a regular SE. To get promoted, you’re going to have to sell.

You could try with a startup and be sales person #2 after the sales-only-sales-person-without-tech-experience. That’s a good way to learn the basics, get a title, and then move into an established company who will respect your background more and compensate you as such.

But it’s really, really not a good time to get into this. Anywhere.

It’s usually feast or famine, and it’s globally a famine - those with jobs are usually just getting base right now unless you’re at a lottery winner who’s selling into gov with expansion guaranteed.

Agreed on the current situation, not really thinking about right now. I have a good role now, with scope to grow and learn for the short term.

But considering this more of a long term question, might transition to Product and then Solutions Engineering as a pathway to maintain some sense of level or seniority.

Why do you say it’s globally a famine? Are software sales that bad right now?

Not bad, but all the signs are there for a downturn.

Banks in EU are cutting back on purchases, because they're not sure how the recent banking issues will actually hit so they brace for impact just in case.

I made this change a year ago for similar reasons to you - I didn't want to be coding for the rest of my career. I can say this is one of the decisions in my career that I truly regret. For me at least, it felt like I was completely starting over. My comp was a modest bump (a 20% increase but with a much bigger portion of that being variable and not guaranteed.) The skills I have been developing are sales/ storytelling skills. I rarely end up writing any code. Unless the thing you are missing in your current role is talking to customers I personally think there is a lot more opportunity as a software engineer with a business focused mindset.

I went to dinner once with a sales guy and his junior sales engineer. We were joking around about how the sales department would say whatever to get the sale. The salesman corrected us: It's me with the big mouth, and I always tell my sales engineers to keep it straight, so they keep their credibility with the client.

Heh, Sales Engineer is what we used to call the guy stuck doing demoware for the sales team that'd never get turned into a real product.

If you want to go to the solution engineer/architect side see if you can get on the sales side so you can get commissions.

staff is highest IC level in coding right? you def wont be principle architect except if you have deep expertise in a specific topic. sales engineer is the most random position ever. my advice just join a highly technical product and then the job is worth it and fun. if you join to sell a dashboard youll regret

> Solution Engineering or Sales Engineer

where do people get these terrible job titles from? and don't get me started about "ICs".

I'd say the roles are quite different. You could argue about ICs / SDE / SDMs - but Solution or Sales Engineering require different skill sets. They are more client facing and your KPIs (or OKRs) are more tied to sales, client relationships or contract renewals.

> KPIs (or OKRs)

is this sarcasm?

You should probably spend some time speaking to folks outside of your dev team and learn how businesses tend to operate

Also consider product management!

OOH! I JUST DID THIS!

I transitioned into a sales engineering role after 15 years of being a sysadmin/SRE/DevOps consultant.

I really like traveling for work (can't do that as a full time engineer) and focusing on positioning our products into where companies want to go long-term without sacrificing my engineering chops.

> Would love it if someone can share similar moves - how did you go about it, how has it worked out and tips if any ?

It went well. Several folks recommended that I do it after they saw me present a demo on a thing I built. I told an account exec (salesperson) that I was interested, and the rest was history.

As for travel: I travel A TON now! I've even done multiple cities a week; a first for me. This is very industry dependent though, but generally speaking, you'll be traveling way more (AEs travel a lot).

> How does the levelling work ? If I need to change roles would I have to take a downgrade or a paycut ? About Staff Engineer level now.

Depends on the company and where you're currently at comp-wise.

I actually got a comp increase in the move, but I don't make those FAANG uber bucks ($250k < x < $300k).

SEs, like AEs, are generally paid on salary and commission and don't receive bonuses or equity (if they do, it is usually nominal). However, where an AE might get a 50/50 split, an SE might get 70/30 or 80/20. Also, commission is usually uncapped, and some companies might have accelerators and other incentives in place to help AE/SE pairs exceed their numbers.

This is why some AEs do things like 0/100 salary/commission splt; all it takes is one whale of a deal to make it worth it!

(Also, if your AE is good, they are definitely making more than you, and possibly more than principal engineers at FAANGs. They absorb A TON of risk though.)

> Any specific skillsets or certifications I should pick up ? I am pretty sure if given an interview I can take it from there, but seems hard to get into a field without experience at a senior-ish level.

At the end of the day, you're there to help an AE close deals.

If you're here on HN, I'm going to guess that you're new to sales. If that's the case, you'll definitely need to spend time learning the sales-y part of your job.

This adjustment is challenging. It's weird to not have my technical abilities be the thing my performance is measured against (though you definitely need to have it, and having more of it is an edge, if your sales/soft skills can counterbalance it).

I would start by reading "Mastering Technical Sales" by John Care. It's the quintessential book on being an SE. It teaches you useful concepts, like the art of doing discovery and identifying pains (you'll hear these terms a lot), driving demos (you'll do these a lot), and more.

I would also join the /r/salesengineering sub on Reddit. It's a small community that's really useful and focused.

Thanks for the detailed write up ! Helps.

I'll check out the book and the subreddit.

> This adjustment is challenging. It's weird to not have my technical abilities be the thing my performance is measured against (though you definitely need to have it, and having more of it is an edge, if your sales/soft skills can counterbalance it).

This is actually one of the reasons holding back as I feel like I am giving up a tangiable hard skill I have (tech / being judged on tech) to a more riskier performance barometer. But hey, need to risk it to get the rewards I guess.

I would read the book regardless of whether you choose to make the move or not. It'll give you a good idea of what the day in the life of an SE is like. I found it to be accurate.

As for being afraid of giving up that hard skill:

1. Unlike going into actual sales or management, you don't give it up entirely. Your technical skills are still very valuable. It will give you confidence when you demo stuff and clout amongst engineering types (which are key to getting the technical win). It's just not THE thing that your performance is measured against.

2. Having presales experience will help you significantly if you choose to go back into full time engineering. You'll have a better idea of what customers want and how sales are made. This will help you gauge when/how to build the right thing and approach sales-y/business people.

In fact, my biggest pet peeve with engineering is that unless you're working at the earliest stages of a startup, you're so far removed from what customers actually want but are incentivized on your tech prowess. This creates perverse motives that tend to be more complex and anti-customer in the name of software craftsmanship and scalability.