Strategic Sales Engineer

Description

Position Title: Strategic Sales Engineer

Department: Sales Engineering

Reports To: Sales Practice Lead

Location: West Coast preferred (Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles) - Remote

Employment Type: Full-Time

About the Role

Avant is moving Engineering from a technical-support function to an integrated sales growth engine. The Strategic Sales Engineer is the regional technical sales leader in that model - embedded with the regional Sales organization and accountable, alongside Channel Directors and Sales leadership, for helping Trusted Advisors (TAs) create, develop, and win more opportunities. This is a generalist role: broad technical range across the categories Avant sells, paired with the relationship and sales instincts to operate as a full member of the regional sales team.

Key Responsibilities

• Participate fully in weekly regional Sales calls as a standing member of the regional team, not an occasional guest.
• Work shoulder-to-shoulder with every Channel Director and Manager in-region.
• Understand the major TAs in the region's PODs and their growth priorities.
• Field inbound cases, responding in a timely fashion and quickly identifying the right go-forward path.
• Participate proactively in opportunity strategy and discovery - engage before a technical request comes in, not only after.
• Help create opportunities, not only respond to them.
• Maintain sales campaign momentum: drive next steps, coordinate resources, and remove blockers.
• Coordinate the right National Sales Engineer resources when an opportunity needs specialist depth.
• Translate business needs into technical and vendor strategy.
• Provide market and customer intelligence back into the Engineering organization.
• Share accountability for regional growth alongside regional Sales leadership.

Technical Scope

This is a generalist role. The Strategic Sales Engineer is expected to carry broad, working knowledge across the technology categories Avant sells - not deep expertise in every one of them. Depth beyond a category or two is supported by National Sales Engineers, whom the Strategic SE coordinates into the opportunity when it's needed.

• Connectivity
• Colocation
• Cloud
• Cyber Security
• UCaaS/CCaaS
• CX & AI

Candidates are not expected to be strong in all seven areas on day one - broad, credible fluency across most of them, with real depth in one or two, is the target profile.

The Sales-First Talent Profile

One common talent standard applies across every customer- and TA-facing Engineering role. For the Strategic Sales Engineer - the role most embedded with Sales and closest to the TA day to day - this profile is not a nice-to-have; it is the job:

• Fierce Curiosity - Genuine desire to understand the TA, customer, business problem, and opportunity.
• Exceptional Communication - Listens extremely well, asks strong questions, communicates clearly, and adapts to the audience.
• Confidence to Challenge - Has the credibility and courage to challenge assumptions and respectfully reframe thinking.
• Turns Business Insights into Discovery - Uses business and market insights to uncover customer priorities and opportunities.
• Simplifies the Complex - Translates technical complexity into clear business language.
• Great Storytelling - Makes ideas memorable through examples, analogies, customer stories, and outcomes.
• Builds Trust Quickly - Earns credibility with TAs, customers, Sales, vendors, and internal partners.
• Ridiculously Responsive - Creates confidence through urgency, ownership, preparation, and follow-through.
• Maintains Sales Campaign Momentum - Drives next steps, coordinates resources, removes blockers, and keeps opportunities moving.

Requirements

What You'll Need

• Experience in a pre-sales, sales engineering, or solutions engineering capacity - ideally within a technology services broker/distributor, VAR, or direct carrier/vendor environment.
• Demonstrated working experience across at least two of the technology categories above.
• A track record of operating as a generalist across a broad technology portfolio, rather than as a single-practice specialist.
• Direct experience partnering with a sales or channel organization - not only fielding inbound technical requests.
• Based in the assigned region, with the ability to be physically embedded with the regional sales team.

Nice to Have

• Experience in a trusted-advisor or technology services distributor sales channel model.
• Experience mentoring or coordinating technical specialists.
• Familiarity with Salesforce and sales engineering opportunity-tracking tools.

Benefits

• Medical Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Commuter Benefits
• 401K Match
• Unlimited PTO
• Generous Parental Leave

The information contained in this job description is intended to convey information about the essential functions and requirements of the position. It is not an exhaustive list of the skills, efforts, duties, responsibilities or working conditions associated with the opportunity. In addition, the employee should be able to communicate effectively and in a constructive manner with management, peers, and coworkers.