Solutions Engineer

Awardspring; Chicago (IL); Híbrido; USD 95.000 - 140.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

Health insurance

401(k) match

Unlimited PTO

Parental leave

Descripción de la vacante

Awardspring is seeking a Technical Solutions Engineer in Chicago to bridge sales and engineering for higher-education clients. You will walk financial aid and IT leaders through how AwardSpring enables award processing, reviews, and reporting on a modern AI-native platform.

You’ll drive technical discovery, demos, and security reviews while coordinating with onboarding teams for a clear scope. The role emphasizes live conversations with prospects and customers, deep product knowledge, and the

Formación

• 2–5 years in a customer-facing SaaS role: solutions, sales engineering, implementation, or support.
• Deep knowledge of API integrations, SSO, security considerations with vendors.
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders.

Responsabilidades

• Lead technical discovery calls with prospects and customers.
• Coordinate with Account Executives for tailored, fit-focused demos.
• Escalate to Engineering leadership for architecture discussions as needed.
• Demonstrate solutions by addressing core problems first, then relevant details.
• Scope integrations and security requirements upfront with teams.
• Own security sections of RFPs and IT questionnaires during deals.
• Hand closed deals to onboarding with a clear technical scope.

Conocimientos

Technical storytelling

Stakeholder management

API integrations

SSO & security

SaaS product knowledge

Herramientas

Salesforce

Descripción del empleo

Who we are

AwardSpring is an established, growing SaaS company that partners with hundreds of colleges, universities, and foundations across the US and Canada to award scholarships and manage their donors. We complete the virtuous cycle of giving, getting, and giving again, on a mature, multi-tenant platform, with a small, focused team.

About this role

You are the technical voice on AwardSpring's calls. You know each product in the platform at the deepest level, and you use that to show a prospect or customer how AwardSpring can be the solution for the work they need to manage. When a Vice President of Financial Aid wants to see how her scholarship process would actually run, you show her. When there's a better way to get there than the one she asked about, you suggest it and offer alternatives.

You are ready to speak with all of the functional and technical teams in an institution. You can walk a financial aid administrator through how awarding, reviews and reporting would work for her office. Then you can turn to the IT team and talk integrations, SSO and data in their language. You know when a deal needs those stakeholders, and you know how to bring them in.

Most of your week (at least 60%) is live conversation, about 80% with prospective customers and 20% with current customers. Account Executives bring you in for technical discovery, demos built around what this institution needs, IT and security calls, and the technical and security sections of RFPs. Customer Success Managers invite you in for a setup that needs deep technical work, or an upsell that needs a technical answer.

You help with the transition of technical items between Sales and Onboarding. What you scope with the customer is what our Onboarding Specialists build. So you don't overpromise. When something needs a clearer answer before we commit to it, you bring in the right people inside AwardSpring first, and you write down what we agreed to.

You don't carry an individual sales target, but your bonus is earned on the outcome of your work. You're on the calls that decide whether we win, retain, and expand our business. You win when the team does.

The mechanical work around the call is handled for you: account briefs before a call, call recaps, first drafts of security questionnaires, and demo sites with sample data. What's left is the part that decides the deal: reading the room, knowing what fits, and earning the trust of the person who has to sign off on us.

How we work

AwardSpring is an AI-native company. Nearly 100% of the code in our product is AI-generated, and every team here operates on the same principle: routine work gets delegated to AI so people spend their hours on the problems that actually need judgment.

We hire for three things:

• Intellectual curiosity. When you don't know something, you go learn it instead of waiting to be taught.
• Agency. You act without waiting for permission. You take ownership of the problems in front of you and move on them decisively.
• Ambition. You want your work to matter. You are here for real impact, and you are willing to push past your own limits to make it.

We are a small, focused team on a mature, multi-tenant platform. Nobody here has a narrow lane.

What you'll do

• Spend most of your week with prospects and customers, talking through their technical solution.
• Keep your calendar open to the Account Executives. They book you directly for the college and foundation deals that need a technical voice.
• Be the second voice the Account Executive wants, not the one who takes the call over.
• Escalate internally when a deal needs more help. Bring in Engineering leadership when a deal needs an architecture call or a commitment we have not made before. Engineering owns the answers; you are the voice on the call.
• When you do a demo, address the real problem, then show the few things that solve it, not the whole product.
• Know the product and how it fits each institution's systems: APIs, webhooks, SIS (Banner, Colleague/Ethos, Workday Student and others) and SSO. Scope integrations honestly, and say what fits before the contract, not after.
• Own the technical and security sections of every RFP, and every security review, including HECVAT and IT questionnaires. Sales owns the RFP and its timeline. You sign off on the technical and security sections, and you consult the CTO before we commit to anything new.
• Hand every closed deal to onboarding with a written scope before kickoff: integrations, configuration, and what was and wasn't promised. Join the kickoff when the deal includes an integration.
• When a Customer Success Manager books you, answer the technical question on their account. The CSM owns the account and keeps the relationship the whole way through.
• Bring what you hear back to product. Objections, feature gaps and competitor mentions go to product the same week.
• Help the Account Executives stand on their own. When the same question comes up twice, turn the answer into something the team and the help center can reuse.

Who you are

• You can go deep with an IT director on SSO, SIS feeds and API integrations, then explain the same thing plainly to a Vice President of Financial Aid five minutes later.
• You ask one more question than everyone else, and you find what the customer needs, not just what they asked for.
• You don't overpromise. When you aren't sure something will work, you get clarity from the right people before anyone commits to it.
• You make the people around you better. Account Executives pick up your answers and use them on their own calls.
• You'd rather be on the call than write about it.
• Technical enough to read an API doc, follow a data feed, and know when to bring in engineering.
• 2 to 5 years in a customer-facing SaaS role: solutions or sales engineering, implementation, or technical support. Higher ed experience helps but isn't required.

What we're not looking for

• Someone who gives the feature-and-benefits dump without letting the customer interrupt.
• Someone who says yes to win the deal and leaves onboarding to pay for it.
• Someone who's more comfortable in the questionnaire than on the call.

How we'll measure you

1. Customer meeting hours per week. Demos, technical discovery, and IT and security calls with prospects and customers. The bar is 60% of your week, about 24 hours.
2. Recurring revenue closed per quarter, for the whole team. New business, cross-sell, upsell and renewals, not only the deals you joined. You win when the team does.
3. Implementation satisfaction. Positive launch survey responses from customers whose deal you scoped. What you scoped is what the customer lives with at launch.

On the AI part of this job

We'll teach you our stack in your first month and check in on it at day 30. By the end of your ramp, working this way is the expectation. You don't brief yourself by hand, write recaps from scratch, or start a security questionnaire from a blank page. You do need to judge what the tools draft, because your name is on what we commit to. The people who do best here reach for the model first and save their own hours for the customer.

How you advance

A year in, doing this well means technical questions have a clear owner, and it isn't leadership. Onboarding starts every project with a clear technical plan, security reviews have someone who can speak to them, Account Executives carry more of the common questions on their own, and product hears from the field through you. From there:

• Senior Solutions Engineer, if you want the biggest deals and to set the standard for demos, scoping and security answers.
• Customer Experience Engineer or Go-to-Market Engineer, if you want to build the systems behind the calls.

Benefits

Health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) match, unlimited PTO, and paid parental leave.

Our values

• Lead with humanity. Genuine empathy for our team, our customers, and the students and donors they serve. That includes candor, saying the hard thing because you respect the person enough to say it.
• Take smart risks. Urgency. Bold, informed bets before the picture is fully clear. Run the experiment instead of winning the debate.
• Take pride in the process. Fast is the standard and thoughtfulness is non‑negotiable. Eyes on the work you control, not the scoreboard.
• Own the results. We measure everything. Accountability runs on data, not vibes, and we can tell the difference between an honest miss and a broken process.

Work location

Hybrid, based in our West Loop / Fulton Market office in Chicago, three days a week. Remote is open for a strong candidate.

How we hire

1. A conversation with the hiring manager.
2. A short take-home based on the real work.
3. Interviews with the team you would work with.
4. A conversation with our CEO.
5. A final debrief and an offer.

AI in hiring

We use AI tools to assist in screening applications and assessing fit. Final hiring decisions are made by humans. Prefer a review without AI assistance? Email our hiring team at [e-mail] to request it. It will not disadvantage you.