Solutions Engineer

Traversal; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Startup equity

Health insurance

Job summary

A cutting-edge technology company in San Francisco is seeking a Solutions Engineer to guide customers through technical discovery and deployment. This role demands a strategic mindset with 3+ years of related engineering experience. Responsibilities include building demo environments, translating customer needs into pilot evaluations, and collaborating across teams. The ideal candidate will exhibit excellent communication skills and possess a strong technical background in backend systems and cloud infrastructure. Competitive compensation including equity and benefits is offered.

Qualifications

• Strong customer instincts and relevant engineering experience.
• Proven enterprise experience navigating complex sales cycles.
• Comfortable working in a fast‑paced startup environment.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical discovery and demo conversations.
• Translate complex problems into tailored pilot evaluations.
• Build and maintain demo environments and technical guides.
• Support onboarding and implementation for new customers.
• Stay current on observability trends and AI infrastructure.

Skills

3+ years in a Solutions Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or Solutions Architect role

Strong technical background in backend systems

Excellent communication skills

Experience building POCs

Project management

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Datadog

Grafana

New Relic

Job description

The Role

As a Solutions Engineer at Traversal, you’ll help define how we engage with prospective customers, you'll guide them from initial technical discovery through successful deployment. This is a foundational, customer-facing role at the intersection of technical depth and relationship building.

You’ll collaborate with product and engineering to translate customer needs into compelling, customized pilot deployments that achieve high value for customers. You’ll work closely with our CEO, CTO, GTM and Product teams to help scale founder‑led sales into a repeatable process. You’ll act as the technical voice in conversations with prospects, create resources to support go‑to‑market efforts, and relay insights back to the team to shape roadmap priorities.

If you thrive in high‑ownership, high‑velocity environments—and are excited to help define how AI‑native infrastructure products are introduced and adopted—we’d love to meet you.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical discovery and demo conversations with engineering teams evaluating Traversal.
• Translate complex infrastructure problems into tailored, high‑impact pilot evaluations.
• Build and maintain demo environments, technical guides, and internal tooling to support our sales process.
• Partner with product and engineering to scope integrations, relay customer feedback, and influence roadmap direction.
• Support onboarding and implementation efforts for new customers, ensuring early wins and long‑term adoption.
• Stay current on observability trends, SRE workflows, and the broader AI infrastructure ecosystem.

Requirements

• 3+ years in a Solutions Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or Solutions Architect role, and/or relevant engineering experience with strong customer instincts.
• Strong technical background in backend systems, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or observability platforms.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to a range of audiences.
• Experience building POCs, leading demos, or owning technical parts of a sales cycle.
• Comfortable working in a fast‑paced startup environment with shifting priorities.
• Project management: able to coordinate across multiple internal/external stakeholders, lead recurring meetings, and drive pilots to completion.
• Proven enterprise experience navigating complex, multi‑stakeholder sales cycles (POV/POC, Security/Legal/Procurement) from discovery through production.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with SRE workflows or observability tools like Datadog, Grafana, or New Relic.
• Hands‑on experience with infrastructure as code tools like Terraform or deployment systems like Kubernetes.
• Proven ability to create technical enablement content and scale early sales motions.
• Interest in AI infrastructure and the future of agentic systems.

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and additional benefits. The U.S. base salary range for this full‑time role in San Francisco is $150,000–$300,000 OTE, plus equity and benefits. Our salary ranges are based on location, level, and role. Individual compensation is determined by experience, skills, and job‑related knowledge.