Sales Engineer

The Solutions Engineer is the customer-facing engine of Kion's pre-sales motion. You're the person carrying the story through the evaluation, hearing what a prospect actually needs in discovery, shaping the eval around it, running the demos, and keeping the room moving from "interesting" to "we have to have this."

This role leans heavily pre-sales, closer to 80/20 or 90/10. POVs, custom demos, technical discovery, executive briefings, and evaluation orchestration are the core of the work. You'll partner closely with the broader Solutions team on every meaningful deal, leaning on teammates for the deepest configuration and integration work while you own the narrative arc, the prospect relationship, and the business outcome they're buying toward.

The most important thing you'll do isn't a demo. It's leaving every call with the prospect feeling heard and in good hands, even when the answer isn't ready yet. People buy from people they trust, and a great SE turns a technical evaluation into a relationship that survives the messy parts, then carries that trust forward into the customer phase.

Why this role matters:
You're the person who makes a prospect's evaluation feel like the easiest part of their year. Not by pitching, but by showing up curious, asking the questions their internal team isn't asking them, and making them look smart to their own stakeholders. That's the first step in turning them into a fan.

YOUR DAY-TO-DAY:

At Kion, everyone shows up for what's needed. That's part of what makes the team effective and the growth real. Expect meaningful context switching between internal and external work, discovery and demo, strategic and tactical. If you thrive when no two days look the same, this is the right seat.

• Lead discovery calls and technical evaluations end-to-end. Uncover what the prospect actually needs, map it to Kion, and shape the eval around the outcomes that matter to them.
• Run product demonstrations that meet the room where it is, whether that's a CFO who cares about cost recovery, a CISO who cares about guardrails, or a cloud engineer who wants to see the API.
• Partner closely with the broader Solutions team on every deal. You own the prospect relationship and the narrative, leaning on teammates for the deepest technical work streams. The handoffs across the team should feel seamless from the outside.
• Build the business case alongside the prospect. Quantify the problem, frame the solution, and make sure stakeholders inside their org are equipped to advocate internally.
• Translate complex technical capabilities into language that lands with non-technical buyers without losing the technical buyers in the room.
• Anticipate objections before they're spoken, and surface them so they can be addressed before they kill momentum.
• Build reusable demo flows, discovery frameworks, and prospect-facing collateral that make every future engagement sharper.
• Translate prospect and customer feedback into product insight in close collaboration with Product and Engineering teams.

WHAT WE ARE EXPECTING FROM YOU (I.E., THE QUALIFICATIONS YOU MUST HAVE):

• 3 to 6 years in a customer-facing technical role:
  Solutions Engineering, Sales Engineering, or Solutions Architecture with a strong pre-sales lean.
• Demonstrated ability to lead a prospect through a technical evaluation. Not just demo a product, but shape the journey from first call to decision.
• Working knowledge of at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP). Enough to demo confidently, hold your own with a cloud engineer, and know where the real-world complexity lives.
• Familiarity with the cloud governance space: IAM, policies, compliance frameworks, Fin Ops concepts, and the messy reality of multi-account environments at enterprises.
• Comfortable using authentication frameworks (SAML, LDAP, Active Directory, RBAC) at the conversational and demo level.
• Strong presentation and storytelling skills. You can hold a room of mixed technical and non-technical stakeholders and keep them all engaged.
• Calm under pressure. When a demo breaks, a stakeholder pushes back, or the room goes cold, you slow down, read what's happening, and adjust without losing the thread.
• Comfo…