Head of Solutions Engineering

Serval Inc.; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Serval Inc. is hiring a leader for Solutions Engineering to define and own the function, build the team, and drive technical wins for strategic IT and security buyers. You will demo, architect, and govern complex deals while shaping the playbook and tooling that scales across the organization.

You will partner with founders and GTM leadership, writing the playbook for demos, evaluations, and security governance, as Serval expands its AI-native automation platform for enterprises.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in solutions engineering or comparable pre‑sales technical role at a high-growth B2B software or infrastructure company, including 2+ years leading a Solutions Engineering Organization.
• Proven ability to sell technical products to senior IT and security buyers, with hands‑on credibility in front of CIOs and security leaders.
• Experience building or scaling a Solutions Engineering function: hiring, setting the bar, and creating scalable systems (demos, eval frameworks, enablement).
• Technical depth: able to hold an architecture review, debug an integration live, and teach others to do the same.
• Fluent with modern IT and identity stack, IdPs/SCIM, ITSM, APIs and access governance.
• Excellent communication and storytelling, translating complex concepts for engineers and executives.
• Builder mindset with high ownership, defining and scaling a function from the ground up.
• Experience with ITSM, IGA, security, or AI automation products is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own Solutions Engineering at Serval: define strategy, hiring plan, team, and the technical motion for pilots.
• Hire, manage, and develop the SE team, setting the standard for technical selling used by future SEs.
• Operate as a player‑coach: carry strategic deals while growing the team to take them on at scale.
• Build the foundational SE toolkit: demos, reference architectures, evaluation frameworks, FAQs, and enablement.
• Define the technical sales motion with founders and account executives; codify value-based use cases.
• Be the senior voice on security and access: guardrails, audit logging, and related questions.
• Establish metrics and cadence: win rates, pilots, time‑to‑value, forecasting inputs.
• Ensure clean handoff to Deployment at pilot kickoff and scale repeatably.
• Bridge field and Product: capture objections and feed real customer signals into the roadmap.

Skills

Technical leadership

Solutions engineering

Team building

Pre-sales execution

Security/IT credibility

Communication & storytelling

AI/LLM familiarity

Deal strategy

Tools

Demo environments

Evaluation frameworks

Enablement programs

Job description

Who We Are

Serval is an AI-native automation platform transforming how enterprises operate. We build intelligent agents that understand real-world workflows and execute them end-to-end — replacing manual processes and rigid legacy systems with adaptive, learning software. Founded in early 2024, Serval is already trusted by companies like Fox, Notion, Perplexity, Vercel, and Brex to automate high-volume, high-friction operational work across their organizations.

Role Overview

This is the leader who builds and owns Solutions Engineering at Serval. You'll define the function from the ground up: the strategy, the hiring bar, the playbook, and the technical motion that turns sophisticated IT and security buyers into customers. You'll start as a hands-on, player-coach leader, carrying technical deals yourself while you grow a team of technical sellers, set the standard for how Serval demos and runs technical evaluations, and build the systems SEs will use. You'll partner directly with the founders, GTM leadership, and Product to make the technical win repeatable and to feed the hardest field signals back into the roadmap. Because the function is new, you’ll get to write the playbook(s).

Who You Are

• A builder and a leader: you can scope a deal, stand up a demo, and win the technical decision yourself, and you're energized by turning that instinct into a team that does it at scale.
• Deeply technical and credible, the kind of person who earns the respect of CIOs, Heads of IT, and security leaders in the first meeting, and who can coach others to do the same.
• A talent magnet who has hired, developed, and retained strong technical sellers, with a clear point of view on what great looks like and a high bar for it.
• Living on the AI frontier, fluent in how agents and LLM-powered systems get deployed and governed inside the enterprise.
• A systems thinker who builds repeatable processes: demo standards, evaluation frameworks, enablement, and metrics that make the function predictable.
• Comfortable in ambiguity, owning outcomes end-to-end, and moving without waiting to be told what to build next.

What You'll Do

• Own Solutions Engineering at Serval: the strategy, the hiring plan, the team, and the technical motion that clears the path to pilot for every prospective customer.
• Hire, manage, and develop the SE team, starting with the founding Solutions Engineer, and set the standard for technical selling that the next generation of SEs will inherit.
• Operate as a player-coach: personally carry strategic and early technical deals (discovery, architecture conversations, security reviews, executive briefings) while building the team that takes them on at scale.
• Build the foundational SE toolkit from scratch: demo environments, reference architectures, technical evaluation frameworks, technical FAQs, competitive positioning, and enablement that ramps new hires fast.
• Define the technical sales motion alongside the founders and account executives, and codify the controlled scope of value-based use cases and success criteria that turn evaluations into pilots.
• Be the senior, credible voice on security and access: guardrails, approval workflows, least-privilege and just-in-time access, audit logging, and the compliance questions security teams press on.
• Stand up the metrics and operating cadence for the function: technical win rates, pilot conversion, time-to-value, and the forecasting inputs leadership relies on.
• Own a clean handoff to the Deployment team at pilot kickoff, and build the process that makes that handoff repeatable as volume grows.
• Act as the bridge between the field and Product: capture the hardest objections and feature gaps, prioritize them with engineering, and bring real customer signal into the roadmap.

What You’ll Need

• 10+ years in solutions engineering, sales engineering, or a comparable pre‑sales technical role at a high‑growth B2B software or infrastructure company, including 2+ years leading a Solutions Engineering Organization.
• A track record of building or scaling a Solutions Engineering function: hiring the team, setting the bar, and creating the systems (demos, eval frameworks, enablement) that make it repeatable.
• Proven ability to sell technical products to senior IT and security buyers, with hands‑on credibility in front of CIOs, Heads of IT, and security leaders.
• Genuine technical depth: you can hold your own in an architecture review, debug an integration live, and answer a sharp security question without reaching for a deck, and you can teach others to do the same.
• Working fluency with the modern IT and identity stack, including IdPs and SCIM, ITSM and ticketing, SaaS administration, APIs, and how access is granted and revoked across an org.
• Excellent communication and storytelling, translating complex concepts for both engineers and executives, and the leadership presence to represent Serval at the most senior levels.
• A builder's instinct and high ownership, energized by being first, defining the function, and creating the systems that scale a team.
• Experience with ITSM, IGA, access management, security, or AI automation products is a strong plus.

What We Offer

• Impact: Be a key player in shaping the success of our product and company.
• Growth: Build a fundamentally new AI product offering with the support of our experienced team and investors. Grow rapidly with the company.
• Culture: Join a culture that values innovation, ownership, accountability, and fun.