Ask HN: Transitioning to a Solutions Engineer / Sales Engineer
OOH! I JUST DID THIS!<p>I transitioned into a sales engineering role after 15 years of being a sysadmin&#x2F;SRE&#x2F;DevOps consultant.<p>I really like traveling for work (can&#x27;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.<p>&gt; Would love it if someone can share similar moves - how did you go about it, how has it worked out and tips if any ?<p>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.<p>As for travel: I travel A TON now! I&#x27;ve even done multiple cities a week; a first for me. This is very industry dependent though, but generally speaking, you&#x27;ll be traveling way more (AEs travel a lot).<p>&gt; 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.<p>Depends on the company and where you&#x27;re currently at comp-wise.<p>I actually got a comp increase in the move, but I don&#x27;t make those FAANG uber bucks ($250k &lt; x &lt; $300k).<p>SEs, like AEs, are generally paid on salary and commission and don&#x27;t receive bonuses or equity (if they do, it is usually nominal). However, where an AE might get a 50&#x2F;50 split, an SE might get 70&#x2F;30 or 80&#x2F;20. Also, commission is usually uncapped, and some companies might have accelerators and other incentives in place to help AE&#x2F;SE pairs exceed their numbers.<p>This is why some AEs do things like 0&#x2F;100 salary&#x2F;commission splt; all it takes is one whale of a deal to make it worth it!<p>(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.)<p>&gt; 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.<p>At the end of the day, you&#x27;re there to help an AE close deals.<p>If you&#x27;re here on HN, I&#x27;m going to guess that you&#x27;re new to sales. If that&#x27;s the case, you&#x27;ll definitely need to spend time learning the sales-y part of your job.<p>This adjustment is challenging. It&#x27;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&#x2F;soft skills can counterbalance it).<p>I would start by reading &quot;Mastering Technical Sales&quot; by John Care. It&#x27;s the quintessential book on being an SE. It teaches you useful concepts, like the art of doing discovery and identifying pains (you&#x27;ll hear these terms a lot), driving demos (you&#x27;ll do these a lot), and more.<p>I would also join the &#x2F;r&#x2F;salesengineering sub on Reddit. It&#x27;s a small community that&#x27;s really useful and focused.