u/NotABoyAnAbomimation

I just found out I didn’t move forward after the second interview for a Solutions Engineer role at Verkada. Pretty bummed about it.

I’ve been a Systems Administrator at an MSP for about 4 years. I work across client environments, cloud infrastructure, networking, endpoint/admin work, security tools, troubleshooting, and general “figure out the problem and make it work” type issues

I was interested in the SE role because it seemed like a good next step toward solution design, customer-facing technical work, demos/POCs, and infrastructure planning instead of staying in the MSP ticket grind forever.

From the job posting, I expected it to be technical but not extremely deep network engineer level. The interview ended up going pretty deep into networking fundamentals DHCP/DORA, DHCP relay, NAT, TCP/HTTPS/TLS, subnetting, etc. I could talk through practical troubleshooting and real world scenarios, but I definitely felt rusty on the more textbook/protocol level explanations.

I’m trying not to take it personally, but it still sucks. The role seemed like a real career jump.

For people who moved from sysadmin/MSP work into Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Technical Account Manager, or Customer Success Engineer roles:

What should I focus on tightening up?

Is this kind of networking depth normal for SE interviews?
Are there better intermediate roles to target before going after SE roles?

Right now I’m thinking my gap is not hands-on troubleshooting, but explaining deep networking fundamentals cleanly under pressure.

EDIT - they called back and wanna do the third interview!!!!! If you have any tips please let me know!!

I just found out I didn’t move forward after the second interview for a Solutions Engineer role at Verkada. Pretty bummed about it.

I’ve been a Systems Administrator at an MSP for about 4 years. I work across client environments, cloud infrastructure, networking, endpoint/admin work, security tools, troubleshooting, and general “figure out the problem and make it work” type issues

I was interested in the SE role because it seemed like a good next step toward solution design, customer-facing technical work, demos/POCs, and infrastructure planning instead of staying in the MSP ticket grind forever.

From the job posting, I expected it to be technical but not extremely deep network engineer level. The interview ended up going pretty deep into networking fundamentals DHCP/DORA, DHCP relay, NAT, TCP/HTTPS/TLS, subnetting, etc. I could talk through practical troubleshooting and real world scenarios, but I definitely felt rusty on the more textbook/protocol level explanations.

I’m trying not to take it personally, but it still sucks. The role seemed like a real career jump.

For people who moved from sysadmin/MSP work into Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Technical Account Manager, or Customer Success Engineer roles:

What should I focus on tightening up?

Is this kind of networking depth normal for SE interviews?
Are there better intermediate roles to target before going after SE roles?

Right now I’m thinking my gap is not hands-on troubleshooting, but explaining deep networking fundamentals cleanly under pressure.

Anyone have anything they buy from Amazon? I’m trying to be healthier and curb sugar cravings at night with something easy. I want to try a protein bar or a healthy snack. But EVERYTHING I find is made or manufactured with peanuts.