Principal Solutions Engineer

About Twingate

For thirty years, securing access to a company's systems has meant making them harder to use. The VPN is the clearest example: a tunnel into the whole network, slow for the people who need it and trusted far more than it deserves. The industry's answer has been more layers and more acronyms. We think that is the wrong direction.

Twingate exists to prove that the most secure way to do something can also be the easiest. A user opens their laptop and the application is simply there. Behind that, every connection is checked against who the person is, what device they are on, and what they are allowed to reach, and nothing else is visible. Security people do not have to think about is the only kind that actually gets used.

We sell to IT and security teams, and increasingly to engineers: some companies embed Twingate inside their own products and platforms. From startups to large enterprises, the deal is won or lost on whether the product does what we say in the customer's real environment. That is where Solutions Engineering lives. Our customers say it better than we do: twingate.com/customers.

The role

Most solutions engineers are measured on whether the demo went well. You will be measured on whether the technical evaluation produced a decision, and on making that decision a success for the customer.

You own the technical journey for our largest and most complex opportunities, from discovery through technical close and into production. Your job is to make sure the customer ends up with what they actually need, which is rarely what they first asked for, and that the people who championed Twingate internally are proven right for having done so.

Everyone on our team takes it personally when a customer does not get real value from what we build. We want someone who shares that mindset: the kind of person who opens doors for others without expecting a thank you, and who keeps asking what a customer experience could look like if nobody had done it that way before. Our shorthand for it: good service is giving champagne when asked. Great service is giving champagne at the right moment, before being asked.

Responsibilities

Run technical evaluations that end in a decision. You and the customer agree in writing, before the work starts, on what success looks like and which requirements are deal-breakers. You keep that agreement current, call it early when a deal-breaker cannot be met, and separate what the evidence shows from what you were told.

Qualify properly, including out. Before you propose anything, you know why the customer should do anything at all, why now, and who cares. You turn vague terms into testable behavior, pull on every thread of a multi-part answer instead of acknowledging it and moving on, and find the driver behind the request rather than the solution the customer proposed. People are good at normalizing pain; you do not take "we don't have much" at face value. When we are not the right fit, you say so early.

Find and build technical champions. Behind every Twingate deployment is someone who put their credibility on the line to bring us in. Your job is to make that person successful: anticipate what they will need before they ask, give them what they need to make the case internally, and make sure the win is theirs. You give more than you get, every time.

Go deep when it is needed, and know when it is not. You can go as deep as any engineer in the room needs, and you can explain the same idea to someone who has never opened a terminal. The skill is reading the composition of the audience and adjusting automatically, so that nobody is left behind and nobody is bored. You are the customer's primary educator, and you are intentional about delivering value to every person on the call regardless of their technical background.

Leave the team better than you found it. Your trackers, guides, demo environments, and product feedback are built so others can use them without you in the room. You give teammates direct feedback on their qualification. And the relationship does not end at the signature: you stay directly involved through onboarding once a prospect becomes a customer, because the person who ran the evaluation is the person who knows what was promised. Continuity matters to us.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in a customer-facing technical role, including several on enterprise deals with multiple technical stakeholders.
• Technical evaluations you scoped and ran yourself that ended in a clear win or a clear, early disqualification.
• Practical networking knowledge: how TCP and UDP connections are established, how DNS resolves, how TLS authenticates two parties, what NAT does to a packet, and ideally how to read a packet capture.
• Hands-on with at least one major cloud, Kubernetes, and an identity provider such as Okta, Entra ID, or Google Workspace. Endpoint security and device management tools (CrowdStrike, Intune, Jamf) are a strong plus.
• Scripting in Python, Bash, or PowerShell, and working with REST and GraphQL APIs. Enough to automate a test or build a small integration, not to ship software.
• A structured qualification method (MEDDPICC or similar). We care less which one and more whether you can show us yours from a real deal.
• Clear, succinct writing. Most of the value in this role is written.
• Familiarity with zero trust network access and adjacent categories helps but is not required. We can teach the market; we cannot teach intellectual curiosity.

How You Work

These traits predict success in this role better than anything on the list above.

Driven by customer value. You measure yourself by whether the customer is better off, not by whether the deal closed. You go out of your way for people who may never know you did; you welcome credit but do not particularly thrive on it.

Resilient. Deals stall, champions leave, evaluations fail for reasons outside your control. You rebound on your own and are comfortable being uncomfortable.

Emotionally intelligent. You read a room from what people do, not only what they say: the stakeholder who has checked out, the champion under pressure, the "yes" that is a polite no.

Coachable. You can hear direct, negative feedback without treating it as an attack. That comes from confidence, not compliance. You give that feedback to others, and you know your own blind spots. You are respectful always, and expect the same from others.

Honest. You tell a customer when the product does not do what they need, tell the account executive when a deal should be disqualified, and never put something in a recap the evidence does not support.

Intellectually curious. You go find out what you do not know rather than waiting to be taught. When you cannot answer a question, you say so and come back with the answer.

Economical. You respect the reader's time. Your recaps, guides, and messages say what needs saying, no more, no less.

Benefits

• Medical (PPO, HMO, HDHP), dental and vision insurance - employees covered 100%
• Basic Life, AD&D and disability insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts - Healthcare, Dependent Care and Commuter
• Health Savings Account
• Flexible Paid Time Off - Paid Holidays (approx. 11 days), Sick Leave (10 days), Paid Parental Leave (6 weeks), Maternity Leave (14 - 16 weeks)
• Retirement - Traditional 401k, Roth 401k
• Additional Benefits - Equity
• Competitive OTE with uncapped commission
• Strong equity upside in a high-growth Series B company
• Remote first culture with intentional in-person collaboration
• A supportive GTM team including Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing

What We Value

• High Agency: We own the problem and don’t think in silos. “Not my job” is not an acceptable excuse if something is not working. Figure out what’s wrong and take initiative to solve the problem. Speak up. Company success is everyone’s job.
• Deliver Customer Value: Company success follows customer success (not the other way around). Everything we do starts and ends with delivering value to our customers.
• Continuous Improvement: Making small improvements consistently is preferred to aiming for big leaps. We embrace that we may not get it right the first time, so we learn by doing, making mistakes, and course correcting constantly. 1% better every day is how we accomplish great things over time.
• Go Find Out: We seek a deeper understanding beyond the surface, and get our hands dirty with ground truth data (no matter the seniority). We know anecdotes can be more powerful than aggregate stats because they can reveal hidden truths. Always be learning.
• Startup DNA: We operate at a higher clock speed and believe small committed teams can make the impossible possible. We embrace that great results only come with great effort, and we lift each other to achieve more than we could achieve alone.