r/salesengineers

I know there’s a several posts about Snowflake but what is the work life balance for SEs on the expansions side? Considering an offer but at my current position (which I worked very hard for) I have excellent work life balance and I don’t want to give up something great for some tu ing that’s going to be a huge grind and detriment to my mental health.

Definitely not immune to working hard and I know the pace of sales but I just don’t want to be shackled to my desk taking call after call with no time to prep or strategize.

Also for sales, is the expectation 3 days a week in the local office? I get conflicting messages about this

After 10 years on the “customer” side I recently made the switch and after 2 months of applying was just given an offer. My unsolicited advice for those looking to break into this world is to network. Your applications will hit ATS or recruiter walls without an internal advocate/prior SE on your resume. In my case I simply contacted a few peers on the current team and asked for a chance to connect and learn more about the company/role. One of them took me up on that offer and after a 30 min chat flagged my name for the recruiter - the rest is history. Keep your head up!

I'm a incoming sophomore in college studying Information Systems + Computer Science, and interning in data engineering this summer. I've recently been taking time to learn about SE, and it sounds like a career perfect for my interests and work style. However, I've seen many suggest that acquiring roles straight out of college is difficult.

The most direct routes I've seen are Associate Sales Engineer programs (these seem limited - how rare are they?) and specific internships with companies before graduation followed by an SE job after graduation if familiarity with the company is up to standard. Could anyone offer me insight into what I can do now to become a strong candidate for these routes? What associate programs could I target, and what internships are best to go for my sophomore and junior summer?

Each AE has quota of $2MM for the year. Q2 $0.00 in sales. Booked doing demos and presentations every single day. Lots of quoting, sales calls, etc. My base is good, so not too hungry for commissions - however, even a modest commission check is sort of motivating.

Each AE has about $800K-1M in pipeline for Q3 target - though I don't have much confidence. Also, just had ChatGPT read my comp plan. I don't get paid on closing deals - its actually one first client invoice. Getting vibe that maturity in this role will take 2-3 years to get traction..

Should I be applying for new jobs?

I've spent 4 years as a fullstack engineer + devops at different companies, and I've been lucky enough to always been part of the direct client contact / sale. In my recent roles i've actually started to look forward more to the sales than the actual developing.

A bit of context where this transition comes from: I started in my first job creating and maintaining apps for health centers, directly talking to directors and IT teams from hospitals, and recently closed my first client as a solo developer at 11k for a startup that needed major fixes to existing code, plus a client-facing dashboard built from scratch. I understood exactly their needs and actual problems as they had a more unexperienced developer at the moment.
I've also been at every meeting with leads at my current job in a sort of SE role, being asked by the CEO who passed the first filter, and answering the technical aspects of the proposal, but also doing the final project requirements, stack, budget, timings and team effort.

My question is, how did you frame your engineering experience in interviews when you had no quota or history? Is cold applying realistic, or is this basically a networking-driven path?

Happy to share more about my background if useful, and obviously open to chatting with anyone who's hiring or knows teams looking!

I am 4 interviews in and the next one is with a network guy. I am from a security background and not a network one
Everyone online has said it’s all behavioral but I’ve been asked so many behavioral questions.
Does anyone have insights into what sort of behavioral questions a networking manager may ask?

Thank you!

Hi everyone!

I’ve been occasionally browsing this subreddit for the past few years as a college student, and I’m excited to now start my first full-time role in about 3 weeks as a new-grad.

I’ll be joining the software division of a large international company. I’m starting in a 5-month training program focused on sales fundamentals, demos, and the company’s software stack, and afterwards transitioning into a post-sales/services role as an Implementation Consultant.

As mentioned before, I'm 3 weeks away from starting, and I'd love to make the most of the time I have.

I would appreciate any advice or suggestions on any way I can learn and grow in this period of time, as well as advice I can take with me as I start my role. Would also love to hear about skills you wish you developed earlier, rookie mistakes, and how I can stand out.

Thank you in advance!

As the title states, I just finished my degree in BUS IT (I also studied Computer Science, did plenty of Teaching Assistant work as well for Algorithms, Analytics, and Database Management).

For the past 2 years, I've been leading a B2B tech startup aimed at universities (I'm responsible for all backend systems, lead gathering, demographic capturing, etc.). I'm also fluent in Spanish.

How would you tackle this?

Hi all, there’s open role in the commercial / mid market segment for manufacturing vertical that just opened up. I know the hiring manager well and can do a warm referral.

Looking for candidates in Chicago or central US (Denver to Ohio) with some combination of Salesforce, sales engineering, sales, and/or manufacturing experience.

I don’t think they will sponsor or relocate.

For context, I have been in technology sales (Networking and security equipment and services) as an AE for the past 5 years at a couple different companies. I became frustrated with a lot of aspects of the role, ridiculous quotas, optics, etc, but mostly desired to learn more about the technology I was selling and wanted to build hard skills related to networking technology. I was tired of not understanding the technology deeper and not being able to have intelligent conversations with my customers. I have recently passed CompTIA A + and Net+ and my thought process is to work in a traditional IT role for a year or two to allow me to build the technical knowledge I would need to become an SE. In your opinion is this the best track? I enjoy a lot of aspects of sales but also want to broaden my technical knowledge and I think SE would be a great way to combine my talents. Open to answer any questions.

It’s been 3 years of working with commercial opps. I am hating supporting 6 AE teams and the shorter deal cycles and the grind.
How do I break into enterprise roles when I have no enterprise stories to tell in the behavioral questions?

My go to is Long John Silvers fish, chicken, shrimp platter, extra piece of chicken and extra hush puppies. I love it and I refuse to buy it on my own dime :) I know, there’s plenty of much better options, it just hits so good!

Edit: I think the title should've been "I'm a new Sales Engineer, but it feels too chill to be true. Am I doing this wrong?" lol

Hi all!

I'm just over 3 months into a new role as a Sales Engineer. I have a few years of experience as a Software Developer before I got this role, and I am super grateful that my company took a chance on me.

Without getting into too much detail about where I work: my company had never had Sales Engineers/technical leaning members of the broader Sales teams before, and relied heavily on members of the product team to join client calls whenever the conversations would become technical in nature.

So, myself and a Senior Sales Engineer with over 10 years of experience as an SE were hired a few months ago. The Senior SE has been amazing at showing me the general ropes of being an SE, and together we've created a ton of internal and external documentation, established better cross functional workflows, and generally have been a technical source of knowledge for the AE's and sales teams in addition to being on client calls.

I will say that we've been told already that we've made a huge impact which feels great, but overall my days/weeks are generally quite chill and I can't help but wonder that I'm doing this wrong? (I'm not complaining about the chill workdays but at the same time I want to make sure I'm doing everything I can)

Typically my workdays/weeks consist of AE's reaching out and asking for support on a call, me doing an hour or two of research for what the client use case for our product(s) is, hopping on a call with the AE and client to explore use cases and showcase some demos of our various offerings, and then afterwards taking time to write a follow up email with sort of a "quick-start" guide for the client's specific use case.

Additionally, the other SE and I have been working on creating demo's showcasing the various products and their value, as well as hosting internal enablement sessions to further educate the broader sales teams on all of the offerings we have. It seems a bit too good and chill to be true?

I'm probably on 4-5 client calls a week, if that helps, with various AE's.

Any advice/guidance would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Has anyone ever worked at Datadog before and what was their experience?
Currently being headhunted for a role but can’t really find any online reviews that I trust

Any Nvidia SAs on this sub? The role sounds very similar to a CE.

Have a few questions about the SA role so please shoot me a dm!

I’m at a startup and the sole SE for a smaller sales department. I’ve been at the company for 4 years now and we’re looking to expand the team. I’ve been charged with coming up with a proper interview process. When I was hired at this company and in previous roles we had the recruiter screen, hiring manager call, presentation round, peer council, and then exec round.

What has been a successful interview process for your company and any recommendations for the technical round to help vet SEs properly? We have a fairly technical product and would need SEs with development experience. Completely understand that every product is different and skill sets vary but more looking for a good structure. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I graduated with a Finance Bachelors and took lots of python courses / fintech courses in college but that was 4 years ago. I don't remember anything python related.

since school, I have done 4 years of operations and sales. I have exceeded goals and become nationally ranked in my organization. I have outgrown this job and am ready for the next step.

I'm tired of just selling and want something where I can use my peoples skills but also use my brain more. What would it take to become a sales engineer from where I'm at?

Do you recommend going into this field in 2026?

Thank you for your replies!

Currently an SE at a big tech company covering mid-market. Had a couple casual conversations with a hiring manager on a different team and things moved fast. Role is for our Strategic segment — 25 named enterprise accounts, think household names and all their US subsidiaries. Very different from the wide territory I cover now (about 500 accounts).

Few things on my mind:

HR caps internal jumps at two so I’d be right at the limit. There will be a big increase in the scope of my responsibilities and I will be covering more solutions than I currently do. Some of them I’m familiar with, others I’ll need to learn from scratch. Anyone made that kind of jump? What was the expectations gap like in year one?

The team is predominantly Japanese given the nature of the accounts. Not a requirement to speak the language but curious if anyone’s navigated joining a team with a strong cultural identity that isn’t yours.

Going from a broad territory to 25 deeply complex accounts is a big shift. Less volume, way more depth. Excited about it but wondering what year one actually feels like making that transition.

Both managers I spoke with said I’m a strong fit independently. Req is being reopened specifically so I can apply. Just gut checking with the community before I dive in.

Anyone been in a similar spot?

Hi everyone

I am a solutions Architect at a cybersecurity distributor. I am totally aware of all cybersecurity technologies from features/benefits perspectives. I can go deep with demonstrations, etc. but never had the hands on experience of implementing/ POCing any of them (even in a lab).

Does this affect my career path? Should I have that hands on in order to get the chance moving into a vendor?

Hi!

I’m still relatively new to the SE space with about 10 months of experience, but something I’ve noticed at least with the company I am with our sales reps and sales manager basically go for any deal even if the deal doesn’t fully align with our company’s core business. I’ve been looped into a few deals where our development team would need to custom build a lot to meet customer requirements which then no longer makes the deal profitable from the amount of development time spent. I’ve also been in situations where a deal was accepted, but the timeline to complete the deal for the customer was completely unrealistic to meet delivery requirements in time.

In these situations I have been vocal multiple times even before a contract was signed, but the sales manager is more concerned about revenue and closing deals even if we will ultimately under deliver to the customer.

I’m curious to know if others have experienced similar situations and what their experience was like. Also curious if this is just normal in the SE space. Unfortunately this experience is my biggest pain point and is the most stressful part to handle due to the balance of maintaining customer satisfaction while knowing we won’t be able to meet their expectations from the signed deal. I enjoy most of the other parts of being a SE from my experience so far, but this pain point to me does not feel sustainable in the long run.