Sr. Partner Solutions Engineer

vCluster Labs; New York (NY); Remote; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

Platinum-level insurance plans

Flexible working schedule

Workplace flexibility

Remote-friendly culture

Job summary

A tech startup is seeking a Senior Solutions Engineer to lead technical strategy for large-scale enterprise engagements. You'll collaborate with Account Executives to navigate compliance challenges and develop persuasive narratives tied to impactful business outcomes. The ideal candidate has extensive pre-sales experience and a thorough understanding of Kubernetes. The role offers significant flexibility in a remote-first work culture, fostering professional growth within a rapidly expanding company.

Qualifications

• At least 6 years of experience in a pre-sales or solutions engineering role.
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience within the Kubernetes ecosystem.
• Ability to understand complex compliance and security issues.
• Willingness to adopt data‑driven, consultative selling rather than old demo tactics.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy for large-scale enterprise engagements.
• Develop tailored narratives that solve deep-seated compliance concerns.
• Translate customer pain into high-fidelity technical requirements.
• Integrate AI‑native workflows to automate discovery and accelerate GTM delivery.
• Mentor SEs, contribute to qualification frameworks, and design scalable PoV templates.
• Represent field observations to Product/Engineering to influence the roadmap.

Skills

Pre-sales or solutions engineering experience

Kubernetes understanding

Cognitive flexibility

Strategic thinking

Mentorship

Strategic thinking

Tools

CKA or CKAD certification

Job description

As a Senior Solutions Engineer at vCluster, you aren't just giving product demos; you are the technical architect of our enterprise customers' success. Sitting at the high-stakes intersection of Sales and Engineering, you will be a key contributor to our market dominance by leading the \"Technical Win\" for our most complex, multi-stakeholder deals as we define the Kubernetes virtualization category.

Your Role and Impact:

• Complex Opportunity Leadership: Own the technical strategy for large-scale enterprise engagements. You will partner with Account Executives to navigate highly regulated industries, developing tailored narratives that solve deep‑seeded compliance, security, and operational concerns.

• Business Value Engineering: Move beyond features to build formal Business Value Assessments (BVAs). You will connect vCluster’s unique capabilities to quantifiable outcomes—linking infrastructure consolidation to actual cost savings, risk reduction, and developer velocity.

• AI Literacy & Augmentation: Naturally integrate AI-native workflows to automate discovery documentation, brainstorm complex multi-tenant architecture diagrams, and accelerate GTM delivery. You will use LLMs to analyze customer requirements and extract high-value technical insights while maintaining a \"human-in-the-loop\" approach to ensure architectural accuracy.

• Mentorship & Process Contribution: Act as a force multiplier for the SE organization. You will coach Associate and Intermediate SEs, identify gaps in our qualification frameworks (e.g., MEDDPICC), and design the PoV templates that scale our effectiveness.

• The Voice of the Customer: Represent field observations directly to Product and Engineering. You will influence the product roadmap by translating enterprise customer pain into high-fidelity technical requirements.

This Role is a Fit for You If:

• Proven Experience: You have at least 6 years of experience in a pre‑sales or solutions engineering role, with a track record of positioning complex infrastructure or platform solutions to enterprise-level buyers.

• Kubernetes Mastery: You have at least 3 years of hands-on experience within the Kubernetes ecosystem. You understand the nuances of control planes, namespaces, and cluster API, and you can explain the trade-offs between legacy multi‑tenancy and virtualization.

• Cognitive Flexibility: You are an open‑minded professional—willing to abandon legacy \"spray-and-pray\" demo tactics in favor of data-driven, highly targeted consultative selling.

• Strategic Thinking: You don't just follow a process; you anticipate market trends (like AI/ML GPU virtualization) and identify complex entry points within the Fortune 2000.

Bonus Points For:

• Technical Credibility: A CKA or CKAD certification and active participation in the CNCF community or open-source ecosystem.

• Regulated Industry Expertise: Deep experience navigating the technical hurdles of Financial Services, Healthcare, or Public Sector environments.

• Modern Growth Mindset: You thrive in environments that reject \"manual\" sales methods and prefer a modern stack where you can solve the revenue puzzle through automation, AI-driven discovery, and technical excellence.

About vCluster Labs

We are a venture-backed tech startup striving to be the leading force in enabling platform engineers. We raised +$30M from top-tier VCs such as Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, Doordash) and are in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to complement our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distributed around the globe and we have a remote-first work culture.

We are the company behind vCluster, an open-source technology for virtualizing Kubernetes (+10k GitHub stars). Open source is part of our DNA.

The adoption of our commercial product based on vCluster has grown extremely fast (multi-million dollar revenue) and our customer base includes some of the biggest companies in the world, including 6 Global Fortune 500 companies as well as some of the fastest-growing tech unicorns.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive Salary: We offer a competitive compensation package, including equity.

• Platinum-Level Insurance: Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance, including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).

• Flexible Working Schedule: You have a doctor’s appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won’t have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.

• Workplace Flexibility: We’re very flexible about where you work. We know things can change in life and we’re happy to adjust the work environment for you along the way.

Culture & Values

At vCluster Labs, we value and stand for:

1. Open Source, Open Mind: We are actively contributing to and maintaining open-source projects. Internally, we foster meritocracy — the strongest ideas win, no matter who or where they come from.

2. Build Tomorrow’s Standards, Intentionally: We don't just ship software; we define the state-of-the-art of tomorrow. We are fearless in tearing down old approaches to build something better, but we are disciplined in how we do it because we know our users rely on our technology to run mission-critical infrastructure platforms.

3. Create Wow: We measure success by the experience we generate, both inside and outside the company. For our customers, this means impressive speed and intuitive experiences. For our team, this means going the extra mile to support one another and to continuously drive each other to new heights.

4. Own the Outcome: We understand that our responsibility doesn't end when a task is checked off; it ends when the value is delivered. We connect our daily individual actions to the broader success of the company and our customers.