Manager, Sales Engineering

Socket; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market-competitive salary bands

Equity program

Comprehensive health benefits for you/

Remote-first with quarterly off-sites

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Socket is seeking a Manager, Sales Engineering to lead and grow the regional SE team, coach engineers, and build a repeatable technical sales motion that scales without relying on a few individuals.

You will collaborate with Sales leadership, oversee discovery to demos/POCs, and ensure strong pre-sales execution while supporting complex customer conversations and demos.

Qualifications

• 7+ years as a Sales or Solutions Engineer including 2+ years managing SEs
• Experience leading technical sales for enterprise customers from discovery to demos/POCs
• Proven ability to coach teams and improve performance without taking over deals
• Credibility in technical conversations with CI/CD, package managers, OSS ecosystems, Linux, scripting (Python/JS)
• Experience building or improving pre-sales systems such as evaluation frameworks and demos

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and grow a regional SE team; manage hiring, onboarding, and performance in Socket’s framework
• Partner with Sales leaders and AEs on deal strategy, qualification, coverage, and prioritization
• Implement a consistent evaluation motion with defined success criteria, owners, timelines, and documented outcomes
• Assess strategic deals and stalled evaluations to identify blockers and improve product/implementation gaps
• Stay technical to support demos, integrations, and convert what works into reusable assets
• Be the voice of the field to Product/Engineering; collaborate with TAMs and Customer Success on handoffs
• Report on metrics like technical win rate, POC durations, and quota attainment; devise improvement strategies

Skills

Sales Engineering

Team leadership

Hiring & ramping

Technical sales

CI/CD

Linux

Python/JavaScript

Pre-sales systems

Job description

About Us

Socket helps devs and security teams ship faster by cutting out security busywork. Thousands of orgs use Socket to safely find, audit, and manage open source code. Our customers - from Anthropic to xAI, and Figma to Vercel - love Socket (just check out their tweets to see for yourself!)

Founded by Feross Aboukhadijeh, a long-time open source maintainer with software downloaded over a billion times a month, Socket has raised $ 125M in funding from top angels, operators, and security leaders.

About the Role

Socket is looking for a Manager, Sales Engineering to lead the team that helps security and engineering buyers understand our product, validate its value, and confidently choose Socket.

Our buyers are technical. They expect clear answers, credible demonstrations, and evaluations grounded in their actual workflows; not generic pitches. You'll coach Sales Engineers to connect software supply chain security to customer priorities, partner closely with Sales leadership, and build a repeatable technical sales motion that scales without relying on a few people to rescue every deal.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll hire and develop strong SEs, improve discovery and proof-of-concept execution, and join strategic customer conversations when your experience can change the outcome. Success means your team gets stronger and more independent, not that every difficult deal needs you in the room.

What You'll Do

• Lead, coach, and grow a regional SE team. Implement Socket’s established hiring, onboarding, development, and performance-management practices, and help drive adoption within Socket’s framework and standards. Run interview loops and help close strong candidates against the established hiring bar.
• Partner with Sales leaders and AEs on deal strategy, qualification, coverage, and prioritization. Help the team earn the technical win while Sales owns the commercial close.
• Implement a consistent evaluation motion: agreed success criteria, customer owners, timelines, technical risk tracking, and documented outcomes.
• Inspect strategic deals and stalled evaluations. Identify the real blocker, coach the SE, and elevate product or implementation gaps with clear context.
• Stay technical enough to support demos, integrations, and complex customer conversations, and turn what works into reusable demos, playbooks, and onboarding.
• Be the voice of the field to Product and Engineering, and partner with TAMs and Customer Success on clean pre-to-post-sales handoffs.
• Report on the metrics that matter: technical win rate, POC durations, POC starts, quota attainment. Find what’s not working and create informed strategies for improvement.

What You’ll Bring

Required:

• 7+ years as a Sales or Solutions Engineer and 2+ years directly managing SEs, including hiring and ramping them
• Experience leading technical sales for commercial or enterprise customers, from discovery through demos, POCs, and technical validation, selling to developers and security teams
• A track record of improving team performance through specific coaching and operating changes, not by taking over difficult deals
• Credibility in a technical conversation: CI/CD, package managers, the open source ecosystem, and how developers work, plus comfort with Linux and scripting in a language like Python or JavaScript
• Experience building or materially improving pre-sales systems such as evaluation frameworks, coverage models, demo standards, or onboarding
• Experience managing through growth at a startup where process and resources were still evolving
• Strong partnership with Sales leadership: you prioritize support, challenge weak qualification constructively, and separate technical validation from close probability
• Clear communication with practitioners, CISOs, engineering leaders, and executives
• Willingness to travel up to 25%

Preferred:

• Experience in software supply chain security, AppSec, DevSecOps, or SCA
• Experience managing SEs across more than one segment
• Practical use of automation and AI tools to improve SE productivity, with sound judgment about accuracy and customer data

Our Interview Process

1. Phone Screen with our Talent Team
2. Virtual f2f with the Hiring Manager
3. Virtual f2f with a few members of the team
4. Presentation
5. Final call with our Founder
6. References
7. Offer

Hiring is a big decision on both sides. Read more about our Hiring Philosophy and how we approach the process at Socket.

Benefits: Our benefits are crafted to support you and your family, so you can take care of what matters most and thrive in and outside of work. We offer:

• Market competitive salary bands
• Meaningful equity program
• Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family (99% coverage)
• Flexible time-off, holidays, and winter shutdown to rest & recharge
• Paid parental leave
• Remote-first, with quarterly team off-sites

At Socket, we

1. Pursue Excellence: We set ourselves apart by consistently delivering work of exceptional quality and distinction.
2. Move with urgency and focus: We prioritize swift, decisive action.
3. Think rigorously: We care about being right and it often takes reasoning from first principles to get there. We value alternative perspectives and have constructive discussions.
4. Trust and amplify: We overtrust, always assume good intent, and give specific feedback to help each other improve.
5. Feel a strong sense of ownership: We wear many hats and feel a strong sense of overall ownership of the company and we're non-territorial regarding our nominal domains.
6. Are customer obsessed: We relentlessly prioritize the needs of our customers, striving to exceed their expectations and delight them at every interaction.