Remote Director, Solutions Eng - Enterprise Pre-Sales

Solo.io

United States

Remote

USD 180,000 - 240,000

Full time

12 days ago

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Job summary

Solo.io is seeking a Director of Solutions Engineering to lead and develop a team across the Central and West regions. This role drives technical wins, leads architecture sessions, and guides POC strategy, while partnering with sales leadership to optimize regional coverage and forecasting.

You will engage with enterprise platform engineering, security, and architecture teams, coaching peers on MEDDPICC and executive communication, with travel as needed to client sites and events in the region.

Qualifications

8+ years of experience in technical pre-sales (Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Field Engineer) for infrastructure software, including 3+ years directly managing SEs.
Proven record of hiring and developing SEs and measurably improving technical win rate or POC conversion.
Deep, hands-on expertise in cloud-native technologies, including Kubernetes, service mesh (Istio), and API gateways (Envoy), along with L4/L7 networking, mTLS, and zero-trust security.
Experience selling to enterprise platform engineering, infrastructure, and security teams on complex, multi-stakeholder deals.
Experience in an open source or open-core sales motion, converting community users into enterprise customers.
Fluency in a formal sales methodology (MEDDPICC, Command of the Message, or similar) and the ability to coach a team to use it.
Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to engage both principal engineers and executive buyers.
Located in the Central or West US, with willingness to travel to customers and events in region.
Experience with Gateway API, Cilium/eBPF, or another API gateway or service mesh product is a plus.
Working knowledge of AI/LLM workloads or agent infrastructure is a plus.
Background at a CNCF-ecosystem or open-core infrastructure company, or experience in regulated industries is a plus.
A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

Lead and develop a team of Solutions Engineers across the Central and West regions, setting a high technical bar and coaching on discovery, demos, POC strategy, and executive communication.
Act as technical executive sponsor on the region’s largest and most complex opportunities, leading architecture sessions, design reviews, and objection handling yourself when the deal requires it.
Own the technical win in region: decide which deals to go deep on and which to qualify out, and set clear POC success criteria with customers before work begins.
Partner with regional sales leadership on account strategy, SE coverage, deal reviews, and forecast accuracy.
Build repeatable assets such as discovery frameworks, reference architectures, demo environments, and POC playbooks.
Position Solo against open source DIY, hyperscaler offerings, and other agnetic infrastructure, API gateway, and service mesh vendors in competitive evaluations.
Act as the voice of the field, bringing structured customer and competitive feedback to product management, engineering, and marketing teams.
Represent Solo in the community through customer workshops, meetups, industry events, and technical content creation.