Sr. Solutions Engineer; US Midwest

Senior Solutions Engineer, Pre-Sales (Mid West)
Sales Engineering | United States (Remote) — Chicago, IL

You will be the technical lead in Alkira's largest enterprise deals — in the room with network architects and infrastructure directors, owning the technical side of the deal from first conversation through POC to close.

This is a pre-sales engineering role. You'll partner directly with an Account Manager on strategy and carry real influence over what we build next — our Product team treats SE field feedback as a primary input to the roadmap.

Remote, US. Candidates should reside in the Chicago, IL region

approximately 25%, including regional air travel as needed. Please discuss the specifics for this position with the recruiter.

• Present and demo the Alkira platform to technical decision makers, from engineer to CIO
• Clearly articulate the Alkira value proposition and have a sound understanding of market, industry and competitive landscape
• Partner with Alkira Account Managers to understand customer requirements and pain points. Assist with any technical asks from customers and help respond to RFP/RFIs
• Scope, run and win Proof of Concepts end to end
• Assist customers with design and deployment based on best practices
• Work with Alkira Product Management team to provide feedback on upcoming features from the customer's lens
• Track and drive key customer features/asks with Alkira Product Management to implementation

• 8+ years in a customer-facing pre-sales engineering role — Sales Engineer, Systems Engineer, Solutions Consultant or Solutions Architect — ideally at a networking or security vendor, cloud provider, channel partner, or consultancy
• Strong networking fundamentals – Everything below builds on this, and it is not negotiable
• Deep expertise in routing protocols and technologies, including BGP, OSPF, and static routing, with hands‑on experience in route policy design, route redistribution, filtering, and traffic engineering
• Understanding of network virtualization and software‑defined networking, including VRFs, multi‑tenant network architectures, SD‑WAN, and the encapsulation protocols used to build overlays at scale (GRE, VXLAN, GENEVE and similar)
• Hands‑on experience with IPsec VPNs, encryption standards, NAT, and secure connectivity architectures
• Good understanding of how enterprises extend cloud connectivity using a variety of Networking Technologies (i.e. Cloud On‑Ramps, SD‑WAN and IPsec)
• Experience in large‑scale enterprise network design and deployment experience across data center, WAN and hybrid/multi‑cloud
• A deep understanding of network services — DNS, DHCP, load balancing, traffic inspection and similar
• The ability to troubleshoot live, in front of a customer, across routing, security and cloud domains
• Excellent written and verbal communication, and comfort presenting and demoing to customers in person – In this role you are the technical credibility of the company

• Understanding of cloud networking constructs across AWS, Azure, and GCP (e.g., VPCs/VNets, Transit Gateway, Virtual WAN, Cloud Router, peering, and hybrid connectivity such as Direct Connect and Express Route)
• Network security expertise, including firewalls (e.g., Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Check Point), firewall policy design, service insertion/chaining, and Zero Trust principles
• Relevant technical certifications (e.g., CCNP/CCIE, AWS Advanced Networking, Azure Network Engineer, PCNSE)
• Familiarity with Terraform or infrastructure‑as‑code for network automation
• BA/BS/MS in a technical field
• Strong passion for sales and creating long‑lasting professional relationships

Alkira, a Lumen Connect® solution, is building the future of enterprise networking: one…