r/salesengineers

Can someone explain what the value Partner and Channel teams bring to a large sales organization in a SaaS business, for example?

I know partner and channel Reps and SEs blowing out their numbers every year in my org by 200%+, but I don't exactly understand what they actually do day to day. I've spoken with people in both roles and to me it seems like they meet with partners to help educate them on the product and do demos and workshops, but they aren't actually selling direct to customers. Is it common for partner/channel roles to perform this well consistently?

Anyone have experience working as an SE at Varonis? Curious into the WLB, culture, etc.

I started my career in SaaS sales and progressed SDR -> AE before going back to school to get my masters in CS. I came out of the program with a job at a F50 company in the cybersecurity department.

I have quite a stable job at the moment, but it’s not necessarily the work I find exciting or fulfilling day to day. I miss working with customers and being apart of a revenue generating arm of the business rather than a cost center.

I’m at the point where I’m ready to make my next career move. I’m considering attempting to get back into SaaS with my technical knowledge that I’ve picked up from 4 years in cyber, along with my 3 years sales xp to help
AEs in the sales process.

Has anyone else made a move like this? Would love to hear other experiences. Does my time in sales even matter to potential employers? It feels on one hand that I have a unique journey, but on the other hand might be totally useless.

I currently work in insurance and I’m looking to transition into tech/SaaS.
For those who successfully made the switch, how did you do it? Did you take any courses or certifications before applying? Are there any free or affordable resources you recommend to learn more about SaaS and the tech industry?
I’d also love to know what helped you land your first role without having direct tech experience.
Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated! 😊

Title: Systems Engineer with 8+ years in IT trying to break into Solutions Engineering

Hi everyone,

I’ve spent more than eight years working across desktop support, MSPs, enterprise IT and systems engineering. I’m currently trying to determine the best way to position that customer-side experience for a Solutions Engineer role.

In my current position, I support enterprise applications, Laserfiche and SQL-backed workflows, identity and access management, endpoint environments and PowerShell automation. I work with business stakeholders to understand operational problems, gather requirements, evaluate possible approaches, test changes and explain the proposed solution and tradeoffs.

I also have client-facing consulting experience where I assess technology needs, recommend solutions based on the client’s environment and budget, present different options, implement the selected approach and guide the customer through adoption. Earlier in my career, I delivered product demonstrations and recommendations directly to customers at Apple.

The part of the work I enjoy most is speaking with people, understanding what they are trying to accomplish and figuring out a practical solution. I’m not particularly interested in becoming an IT manager or spending my entire career doing deep coding, so Solutions Engineering feels like a natural direction.

My main gap is that I haven’t worked within a formal SaaS sales cycle or held a presales title.

For those who transitioned from IT or the customer side:

• Does this sound like enough transferable experience to target SE roles directly?
• How did you prove discovery and customer influence during interviews?
• Did your first company teach you the demo, POC and sales-cycle portions?
• Would you target products you previously administered as the easiest entry point?

I’d appreciate any honest feedback from people who have made a similar move.

In the middle of an eval between the two solutions and have hit a mental roadblock comparing the two. What is everyone’s thoughts?

Giving notice soon at my company to join a direct competitor. I’m expecting they might walk me out same-day rather than let me work the two weeks, given the competitive overlap. They’ve done this in the past depending on the company.
They’ve paid out people in the past so I’m looking at it as a free two week vacation if I tell them but I’m taking a risk

Genuine question: when this has happened to you, did they still pay out the notice period even though you didn’t work it? I’m in an at-will state so I know they’re not obligated to, but I’ve heard it’s common as a courtesy, especially for salaried/professional roles.

Curious if that’s actually been the norm in your experience, or if I shouldn’t count on it. Also open to whether it’s worth asking HR directly before I resign, or if that’s a weird thing to ask preemptively.

​

I joined my current company 2 years ago as a fresher and I'm currently working as a Solution Engineer in the test automation space.

I actually really like Solution Engineering and want to continue in this career, but I want to move into the networking/security domain.

So far I've:

Completed PNPT

Solving TryHackMe

Started preparing for CCNA

Applied to 60+ networking/security jobs

Started applying for Systems Engineer roles as well, since I'm still pretty beginner in networking

But honestly, I'm not getting much response from applications.

I want to eventually target companies like Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Cisco.

The thing I'm struggling with is that most Solution Engineer roles I see are asking for 5–7+ years of experience, and my 2 years are mainly in test automation.

I've looked at a lot of people's profiles and noticed that many people in Security Solution Engineering come from a networking/security background. Some have moved from core networking, some from cybersecurity, and I've also seen people move from observability into these roles.

But coming from test automation → networking/security feels like a pretty big jump.

I do have the Solution Engineer side of things — working with customers, understanding requirements, technical discussions, demos, POCs, troubleshooting, etc.

At the same time, I'm trying to build my networking and security knowledge.

So I'm a bit confused about how I should approach this.

Should I focus on networking first and then move into security?

Should I keep applying for junior Systems Engineer roles?

Should I target security companies even if the role isn't exactly Solution Engineering?

Or should I spend more time building hands-on networking/security projects and certifications before applying again?

Would really appreciate advice from people who have made a similar transition.

If you were in my position, what path would you take?

Hey so I’m an SE in fintech for many years now but always had a really decent workflow or teams to work with. The best org I ever worked for had an amazing process I’m trying to potentially replicate it here but tbh idk if it’ll work either.

Here’s the workflow from the “best” place I worked at:

How I see it every deal comes in should be a case in salesforce or a CRM tool.

Then that should go thru a vetting process with an SE manager and they assign it to an SE to do. Some deals shouldn’t come to an SE in this region or maybe it’s a biz we can’t get underwritten etc.. manager is constantly vetting with legal or product or whoever. I was never really on those calls.

From there the SE would work with an AE who’s managing the deal from the commercial side and SE manages it from the technical side.

Get on initial discovery and SE creates an initial BRD. That BRD lives in a shared drive.

Sandbox is provisioned, api docs are shared along with a shared thread to communicate with the client and AE is copied in.

Additionally there’s a slack channel made per deal you work on and in the channel all relevant ppl are in it for the deal.

Constant comms is how we did it. Comms to make sure we are driving the deal forward. Comms channel are also available for the SE team to ask each other help but also product and eng as well to answer any deeper “hey can we do this” or “hey this is an error they’re seeing anyone can help me” type situation.

Ofc in the pre sales you run into technical debugging and so we had tools to debug esp api related stuff. Or we had support look into it if it related to support.

While deal is moving along we should see more progress leading up to a final BRD and that final BRD gets sent to the client. Client sees it and agrees and gives the okay that they are good to go on the integration and integration into sandbox is working and a handoff process is past off to a post sales engineer to do certification. pre sales SE goes away and repeats his cycle and makes updates to salesforce case and assigns it to the Post Sales SE

Post sales SE will get on a call to do a final check making sure everything is kosher. (Typically tho it’s multiple calls but I’m simplifying it) they ask for the client live on call to perform a few test transactions and records the results live in a certification doc. Literally just copies and pastes the logs to prove it’s working.

After that they provision out production creds along with a final copy of the results so the clients dev teams can look back and see the full picture from final BRD to final Cert doc.

After that the post SE guy hands it off to the AE or CSM at that point and the cycle continues.

Here’s my current issue:

Got hired at a new org but they have nothing I just described^ they have some half baked version. No BRD no case management in fact there is no case management each deal is basically coming in rn on the AE side and they randomly copy me into threads with random subject lines. They also randomly throw me into calls with zero context.

They also have no BRD process but in lieu of a BRD they have a crude tier sheet. Meaning it’s a menu of options a client can “purchase” from and integrate. And the more they integrate the higher the tier they are and therefore the higher rev share they earn from the processing of the transactions. (If ur tier 1 then you will earn 5% or if ur tier 2 u might get 10% rev share as an example) the idea is to incentivize the client to integrate more of the API into their platforms making them “stickier”. I get the logic but in practice it doesnt actually happen. Bc most of the time they want us for this one process and thats it.

It’s my job to construct the three tiers and based on the initial call I had with them I will make a tier sheet and hand it off to the AE to discuss with the client but the AE does not include me back into the convo after that so on subsequent calls or emails I have no clue what they want to “purchase”. Or what tiers they went with. When asking the AE for context they make me ask their manager bc it needs approval for me to see it for some reason.

but the issue I’m running into isn’t just that there isn’t a clean process it’s also that I’m the only person rn. The other issue is everything is done via one shared inbox what I mean by that is they also have me doing integration support along with SE. Meaning I’m helping existing clients debug their issues like support would be doing and it’s all within the same inbox as my SE job. It gets messy fast. This is bc the current support team isn’t trained on the APIs. They only know about the modules we sell in-house and regularly address those support issues related to the platform. There’s also no help system for me to get answers back to clients on both the api support side and the SE work. I’m still new here but there’s no clean way for me to ask for help. Often times the knowledge is siloed and when asking eng or product they may know this or that but i spend most of my days piece mealing a solution to the problem.

There’s also no AI adoption not really. I was hoping to automate the process more with AI. And also I asked them to put in a ticketing system to handle all the actual support stuff so it leaves the inbox for purely SE concerns.

A ticketing system lets me link issues, escalate to the right teams or track SLAs but since it’s one giant inbox with only subject lines and no ties back to salesforce I’m guessing half the time who I’m speaking with.

Then there’s the certification piece. Every deal has to be certified. Just like how it was in the “best org I worked at” same thing here. This is bc we need to make sure each time the client transact it is passing the correct values to the interchange so it doesn’t hit any violations at the card network level. If it does then they lose money and so do we. But normally in order to certify we ask them to perform basic checks live on a call with us. Then we internally use tools or VPN into the servers to check the logs. Issue here is I have no tool or access to the logs. I actually have to take their api key and plug it into a postman collection and replicate their calls and see the logs from there.

Once it’s deemed certified I have to email a bunch of specific people internally to getting them the production account. That can take days bc the people I email internally are actually senior directors of eng and they’re jam packed in meetings all day.

I’m getting burnt out and it’s only been 12 weeks what can I do to help make this better? Thoughts? Yall can ask more clarifying questions

Like a good SE I have a number of different ways to answer the same question that inevitably comes after I say I’m a sales.._engineer_. I’ve usually got it covered with adults. I usually try to read the room to figure out if a serious or cheeky answer fits best.

This weekend I was driving with my kids 12f/11m) and despite me doing this gig for their entire lives (and before) they didn’t seem to really understand.
My son (who is very much into video games) in particular seemed to think I was building the software. Then this particularly apt metaphor hit me.

“You know how you play super Mario maker 2? You didn’t create the whole game, but you use it to create awesome levels to show people the cool stuff it can do?” That really boiled his noodle 😂

What are some creative ways you explain your job to the younger crowd?

Edit: FFS guys, this was supposed to be a funny post about explaining your job to kids.

Applying to different sales engineer positions, I have noticed a variety of employers care less about the engineering part of a SE job description and in reality they are looking for a hunter, relationship builder and business development person; more often than not, they do not have any AEs to take care of the deals or do any of the prospecting. Aren't these the responsibilities of an AE?

To me, this seems like they want to avoid hiring multiple people, make people believe this is an engineering role and frankly misleading compared to the job description.

For the people with a Sales Engineer title, would you say this is the most common experience? How would you compare your responsibilities to an Account Executive?

I have only had prior 1 job as a SE but since we were 95% inbound sales, prospecting wasn't really a part of the job and my conversations were, for the most part, with people already interested in the product. Is this rare?

What KPIs or metrics does your leadership team use to measure and manage SE performance?

Personally, I'm not big in tying SE success primarily to closed revenue. We influence deals, but we don't negotiate pricing or own the close.

Some of the metrics I find more meaningful are:

• Time to secure a Technical Win (TW): Number of days from initial SE engagement through technical win completion.
• TW-to-Quota Ratio: Technical wins that ultimately close as won business compared to quarterly quota attainment.
• TW-to-Pipeline Ratio: Technical wins compared to the amount of qualified pipeline being supported.
• TW Outcome Rate: Percentage of technical wins resulting in a "Yes" versus a "No."

What other metrics have you seen used effectively?

If your organization tracks something unique, plesae share - bonus to hear how it's calculated and why leadership finds it valuable.

I have a MSCS and I’ve never written a line of code for the 3 companies I’ve been an SE for over the last 10 years. Aside from doing it for fun.

However just had an interview for a role advertised as SE where they wanted me to go into the clients implementation tool and assess the code to make sure it was implemented properly.

I stopped and asked if this was implementation or presales and he assured me it was presale and then continued to ask me to assess the implementation….

Have you ever seen anything like this?

Hey yall, looking for outside perspective from people actually in sales engineering.

Background: graduated with a mechanical engineering BS last year, 7 month job search, landed a role as a “Technical Sales Engineer” at a small electronics component manufacturer that mostly serves aerospace, defense, medical, and industrial customers. The company is very small and private.

What my day to day actually looks like:
- I don’t really generate leads or prospect. Customers come to me already knowing what they need and asking if I can help.
- I’m the primary point of contact for customer accounts, including weekly live calls that cover both technical questions and commercial terms like pricing and delivery.
- I run product testing and verification against customer specific thresholds, using lab equipment to characterize performance and confirm parts meet requirements.
- I’m the QC signatory, the one who signs off on Certificates of Conformance before product ships.
- I do engineering calculations to support product selection, translating customer requirements into technical specs and recommending the right part for the application.
- When something comes back as a return, I run a root cause investigation with production management. Then we design the corrective fix. One example: traced a batch of returns to a manufacturing defect and built a new screening step to catch it going forward.
- I help coordinate outside qualification testing with third party labs when a new customer needs a part qualified, which helped land a first order from a new Fortune 500 aerospace customer.
- On the business side, I manage the full order pipeline (quotes/scheduling/shipment/post sale support) & contributed to about a 28% revenue increase over the past year through account support/order management.

Happy to add more detail on any of this if it helps give better context.

Pay is around $60k base plus bonuses which seems really low. I couldn’t complain though since it was my only offer in this market.

For people already in the field, I’m curious if the “no lead gen, just technical matching plus account management” version of the role I have tracks with how the field normally works, or if that’s unusual. And more broadly, is this a reasonable first job out of a Mech E program, or should I be more aggressively looking for something more purely technical.

Appreciate any honest feedback. Genuinely trying to figure out if I’m on a good track.

I graduated from a mid uni in CS, couldn't find a job for 2 years, through connections got a referral and had an internal hire interview. Thought that was it and didn't think about recieving an offer. I got an offer with well considerably low salary ( though who cares after not having experience and being unemployed? ) and accepted it. 2 months of onboarding + trial before official employement. Checking employees of the company, all graduated from top unis + worked at reputable companies.

It's a junior pre-sales role and through research I read that normally you need 3+ years of experience and network to get this job?

I feel so cooked and I have no idea where to start. What should I expect? What should I focus on learning before starting the role? How can I keep this position without embarassing myself? Thank you for advices in advance 🙏🏻

Anyone else getting a little concerned that the “ships” of industries laying off people in mass are starting to arrive on the shores of Sales Engineering island? I’m seeing a LOT of posts about people leaving SWE among other industries to join Sales Engineering, and as much as I love to sing kumbaya as the next person, not feeling too great about the long term effect of this.

I was a SWE and now I’m an SE, HIGHLY recommend, less layoffs, better pay, better treatment.

This is where the jobs are at, happy to help anyone pivot who needs it

Hi everyone. I’m relatively new in my sales role. I come from HVAC design and am now in a role where I am “selling” HVAC equipment to engineers, like I used to be. I put sales in quotes because in my industry and role, the engineers are not the actual buyers, rather they put the equipment on the drawings and contractors later purchase that equipment from my company or an equivalent competitor. So I’m not really talking dollars or making deals like that.
A big part of my job is conducting lunch and learns and this is something I am trying to get better at. I know I am pretty monotone and drop a lot of “ums”.

I feel like I am pretty personable and have no issues taking clients out to lunch or an event and shooting the shit. But presentations are another thing.
I’m looking to hear what worked for you guys? I’ve heard improv classes can help, and my local community college offers some speech courses. I’ve got a 7 week old now so something online might be easier for me - if those are worthwhile.

An AE who makes quota with a lot of handholding from senior mgmt and sales engineering.

Frankly, I carry him in meetings, even from the commercial aspects. He's good at BDR work but can't run a sales process.

He lucked into an insanely good offer from a competitor in hypergrowth. He's trying to get fired at current job (he's been on the brink for 2 years)

Wants to bring me in. Honestly, I think he will flame out. No discipline

But I'm miserable at current job. The company engineering, marketing and product team just aren't good enough... nothing documented, they're too slow to bring things to market, QA is hot garbage, don't listen to customers (misinterpreting Henry Ford's maxim about customers would want a faster horse) to create stuff no one wants. The money is not bad, but they mentioned an IPO, and I just laughed.

One thing, I'm older (54, look late 40s) so worried about ageism (I am adept with current tech, I'm actually the person people come to solve tech problems)

I'm wondering if I'm just feeling desperate.