Director Solution Engineering - US

Certinia; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 189,000 - 233,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote/hybrid options

Wellness stipend

Career growth

Job summary

Certinia is seeking a Director of Enterprise & Strategic Solution Engineering to lead a high‑impact team across North America. You will drive strategic deals, coach senior SEs, and own the demo and discovery framework while translating AI capabilities into tangible business value for enterprise buyers.

You will partner with Sales, Product, and Marketing to shape the field’s voice, with travel up to 50% as needed.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams in pre-sales environments.
• Experience delivering executive-level value narratives to CFO/CEO audiences.
• Strong collaboration and communication with technical and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead Enterprise/Strategic Solution Engineering team across NA to hit regional revenue targets.
• Hire, coach, and develop SEs; back up on strategic deals as needed.
• Own demo infrastructure, scripts, and discovery methodologies (Tell–Show–Tell).
• Develop quantified value narratives and ROI models for large opportunities.
• Coordinate with Product and Marketing to align field needs to roadmaps.

Skills

Team Leadership

Executive communication

Pre-sales

AI/agentic capabilities

Sales presentations

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

US – Remote

ABOUT CERTINIA

Certinia (formerly FinancialForce) is the leading Services-as-a-Business platform, connecting every stage of the services lifecycle — from opportunity and delivery through customer success and financial management — on a single, Salesforce-native platform. Certinia's Professional Services Automation (PSA), Financial Management (FM), and Customer Success (CS) solutions, together with Veda, Certinia's AI layer, give services businesses the intelligence and agility to run with certainty and grow with confidence. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with team members around the world, Certinia is backed by Haveli Investments, TA Associates, General Atlantic, and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.certinia.com .

WHY THIS ROLE, WHY NOW

The services economy is shifting from billable hours to outcomes, and from manual coordination to AI-driven execution. Certinia's value proposition has expanded tremendously and our largest and most strategic customers are asking a different question in evaluations than they did two years ago: not just "can this replace what we have," but "can this run parts of my business for me, safely." Our Enterprise & Strategic Solution Engineering team sits at the center of that conversation. This Director owns how that team shows up: technically credible, value-led, and fluent in both the classic PSA/ERP sale and the emerging agentic one.

THE ROLE

Solution Engineers are trusted advisors focused on customer outcomes. Through structured, value-based discovery and demonstration, we help prospects see a clear, credible path to transformation on the Certinia platform — including how Certinia's agentic AI capabilities change the way services businesses operate. We continually build our solution expertise, our command of the competitive landscape, and our ability to present value in business terms our customers care about. Beyond individual deals, we support pipeline-generating activity, contribute to sales enablement, and feed market and competitive intelligence back into product and marketing.

This Director will lead Certinia's Enterprise & Strategic Solution Engineering team in North America, reporting to the VP of Global Solution Engineering. You will lead a team of senior, technically strong SEs aligned to Enterprise and Strategic Account Executives, responsible for driving technical win and articulating quantified business value across complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles. Day to day, you will coach and mentor SEs on discovery, demo strategy, and executive-level value presentation; ensure every strategic pursuit is properly resourced and prepared; and personally engage with prospects and customers — including presenting to economic buyers and C-suite audiences — on the largest and most strategic opportunities. You will own the team's contribution to regional revenue targets, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development. Ideal candidates are results-oriented and customer-focused, with technical depth, credibility with senior enterprise buyers, and comfort operating in long, complex, multi-threaded sales cycles.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Lead the team and the number

• Lead and grow an Enterprise & Strategic Solution Engineering team to achieve regional revenue targets, in close partnership with Enterprise/Strategic Sales leadership.
• Own hiring, coaching, performance management, and career pathing for the team; back up individual SEs on strategic deals as needed.
• Build and maintain the demo infrastructure the team depends on — demo org rules of engagement, environment governance, and a library of current, on-brand demo scripts — so every SE can show a credible story on short notice.

Win the largest, most complex deals

• Personally engage on the team's most strategic and complex pursuits — including executive discovery, value-based demonstrations, and tailored executive readouts — often as an individual contributor alongside the assigned SE.
• Champion a structured, consistent demo and discovery methodology (Tell–Show–Tell) across the team, so every SE presents a clear, credible, and differentiated point of view rather than a generic feature tour.
• Build and maintain quantified value narratives — ROI and business-case models — that translate platform capability, including Certinia's AI agents, into board- and CFO-level business outcomes.
• Own technical proposal creation and RFP/security-questionnaire response quality for Enterprise/Strategic opportunities, including scoping and technical clarifications.

Keep the team ahead of the AI curve

• Lead enablement for new product and AI agent capabilities as they ship — new Veda agents, new autonomous workflows, new integration patterns — so the team can demo and position them credibly on day one, not after a scramble.
• Translate agentic AI capability into terms a CFO or COO will act on: where autonomy is safe today, where human stays in the loop, and what that means for a customer's risk and governance posture.
• Drive competitive readiness for an increasingly AI-native competitive set: keep the team current on how rivals package agentic capability, where their claims outrun what's shippable today, and feed win/loss intelligence back into sales enablement and product.

Own the field's relationship with Product

• Serve as the primary voice of field needs and market-driven innovation into the Product organization for the Enterprise/Strategic segment — not a once-a-quarter form, but an ongoing, managed relationship with Product Management on what the largest customers need next and why.
• Represent the voice of Enterprise/Strategic SEs into the quarterly product roadmap input process, surfacing the capability gaps and requests that matter most to this segment, and following through until Product has a clear answer.
• Build and maintain additional platform configurations, extensions, and solution accelerators — beyond what ships out of the box — to solve specific customer business problems in the sales cycle, then work with Product to determine which should become standard product rather than one-off SE work.
• Bring real field evidence (win/loss patterns, deal‑specific gaps, customer asks) to product conversations, so roadmap decisions are grounded in what Enterprise/Strategic customers are actually asking for, not just inbound requests.

Extend the team's reach beyond the deal

• Partner cross‑functionally with Product Marketing, Product Management, and Delivery/Professional Services so customers experience one consistent, connected story from evaluation through go‑live, not a handoff between strangers.
• Contribute to the broader Solution Engineering leadership team's initiatives on evolving how presales and postsales work together across the customer lifecycle.
• Travel as required (up to ~50%) to support customer meetings, executive presentations, and team leadership.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Strong collaboration, communication, and leadership skills; able to operate credibly with technical, business, and executive audiences alike.
• Demonstrated ability to build and deliver quantified, executive-level value narratives — not just product demonstrations.
• Experience in all aspects of pre‑sales, hands‑on.
• Minimum 5 years in a pre‑sales organization.
• Minimum 5 years of ERP, PSA, or related enterprise business application domain experience.
• Experience with Cloud/SaaS offerings; Salesforce platform experience strongly preferred.
• Comfort evaluating and positioning AI agent / agentic workflow capabilities to enterprise buyers, including where human oversight matters.
• Strong presentation and executive communication skills.
• Up to 50% travel.
• Ability to multi‑task, communicate priorities, and manage time effectively across a global, cross‑functional organization.

Nice to have

• Direct hands‑on experience demoing or configuring an AI agent, copilot, or automation platform (no coding required — familiarity with what \"good\" looks like in an agentic demo).
• Experience building or running a formal SE enablement program (workshops, certification, competitive battlecards).
• Prior experience in professional services delivery, giving you credibility on what happens after the deal closes.

HOW WE WORK WITH AI

Certinia is an AI-forward company, and we expect this role to be too. You'll be expected to lead a team that uses AI tools daily to work faster — drafting and refining value decks, preparing discovery questions, summarizing competitive intel — while keeping sound judgment about where a person, not a model, needs to make the call. You do not need to write code or build agents yourself; you do need to be comfortable evaluating what an AI agent actually did versus what a slide claims it did, and coaching your team to do the same.

Beyond using AI tools well yourself, innovating how AI is applied to the Enterprise/Strategic motion itself is part of the job, not a side project. On deck for next year: agents that help identify and qualify the right accounts to pursue, agents that assist with completing discovery before or alongside the SE, and AI that accelerates Value Prototyping and presales trial motions so prospects reach a proof point faster. You'll be expected to help shape and pilot this — not just wait for Product to hand it to you.

WHAT CERTINIA OFFERS

• A flexible work environment, with remote, hybrid, and flexible scheduling options for many roles.
• A wellness program with a monthly stipend toward gym memberships, mental health resources, or fitness equipment, plus access to wellness apps.
• The chance to lead a high‑performing SE team through one of the more consequential product shifts in Certinia's history.

Base Salary Range: $188,700-$233,000

Certinia is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate against any applicant or employee on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. Certinia also provides reasonable accommodation for applicants and employees with disabilities; if you require an accommodation, please contact the People and Culture Team.

Equal Opportunity Employer
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