Solutions Consultant Job Description
A solutions consultant (sales engineer) job description template covering technical demos, proofs of concept, RFPs, and the base-heavy pay split.
A Solutions Consultant — called a Sales Engineer or Pre-Sales Engineer at other companies, all describing close to the same job — is the technical half of a sales team. The Account Executive owns the relationship and the number; the Solutions Consultant owns proving the product actually does what the AE is claiming it does, through a demo built around a specific prospect's environment rather than a canned script, technical discovery, and often a hands-on proof-of-concept.
The role attracts two different kinds of mismatch, and it's worth knowing which one you might be before applying. Some candidates are engineers who wanted to talk to customers occasionally, and are surprised by how much of the job is presenting under pressure to a room full of a prospect's stakeholders. Others are salespeople who wanted out from under a personal quota, and are surprised by how much of the job is still genuinely technical — configuring an environment, reading an API doc, debugging a failed integration live on a call.
On pay: this role carries a base salary plus variable, the same structure as the rest of the sales organization, but the split skews further toward base than an Account Executive's does — commonly seventy-five to eighty percent base — because a Solutions Consultant supports deals rather than owning the close. A posting for this role that quotes only an OTE figure is describing the same best-case number it would for an AE, without saying how much of it is actually guaranteed.
Brindlow · Atlanta, GA
Full-time · On-site
$110,000 – $130,000 base ($140,000 – $165,000 OTE)
About the role
The Solutions Consultant at Brindlow partners with the Account Executive team through the technical portion of the sales cycle for our supply chain visibility platform: demos tailored to a prospect's warehouse, ERP and WMS environment, technical discovery with IT and operations stakeholders, proof-of-concept pilots, and the technical sections of RFP responses.
This is a senior, onsite individual-contributor role based in our Atlanta office, with no direct reports. You'll typically be supporting three to four active Account Executive deal cycles at a time, prioritized by deal size and stage.
What you'll do
- Run technical discovery with a prospect's IT and operations stakeholders to understand their existing systems and integration requirements.
- Build and deliver product demos tailored to a specific prospect's environment, not a fixed script.
- Own proof-of-concept pilots end to end: scoping success criteria with the customer, configuring the environment, and presenting results.
- Write the technical sections of RFP and security-questionnaire responses.
- Partner with an Account Executive throughout a deal, translating between what the customer's engineers need and what the AE is negotiating.
- Flag integration risk or technical blockers early enough in the cycle that they don't kill a deal in week eleven.
- Feed recurring technical objections and integration gaps back to product and engineering.
- Support three to four active Account Executive deal cycles at a time, prioritizing by deal size and stage.
What we're looking for
- 4+ years in a pre-sales, sales engineering or solutions consulting role at a B2B software company, or equivalent technical plus customer-facing experience.
- Comfortable presenting live to a room of skeptical technical stakeholders, including handling a demo that breaks in front of them.
- Working technical fluency: reading API documentation, understanding common ERP and WMS integration patterns, and holding a real conversation about data flow.
- Ability to translate technical detail into terms a non-technical economic buyer will actually act on.
- Experience scoping and running a proof-of-concept or pilot against a defined, measurable success criteria.
- Comfortable supporting a sales cycle without personally owning the commercial number, and genuinely motivated by that.
Nice to have
- Prior experience as a software engineer, implementation consultant or product specialist before moving into pre-sales.
- Experience with supply chain, logistics, ERP or warehouse management systems specifically.
- Familiarity with REST APIs and common integration platforms well enough to speak to them unscripted.
- Experience responding to formal RFPs and security questionnaires.
Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision coverage, with employee premiums covered in full.
- 401(k) with a 4% company match.
- Base salary plus variable tied to the deals you support closing.
- $2,000 annual learning budget, usable on conferences, courses or certifications.
- Twenty-two days of paid time off plus company holidays.
Salary range
As posted for this sample role. Real pay varies by employer, location and experience.
$110,000–$130,000/ yr
ATS keywords for this role
The applicant tracking system (ATS) — the recruiting software a hiring team searches and filters applicants with — will screen for these. Weight shows how central each one is to this specific posting.
Required and central (4)
Important (6)
Mentioned in passing (6)
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a Solutions Consultant and a Sales Engineer?
In practice, usually none — "Solutions Consultant," "Sales Engineer" and "Pre-Sales Engineer" describe the same job at different companies, and some use more than one title internally. Read the responsibilities section rather than the title to know which flavor a given posting means.
Does a Solutions Consultant carry their own sales quota?
Usually not an individually owned closing number the way an Account Executive does, but most Solutions Consultants are on a variable compensation plan tied to the deals they support — sometimes measured on their own supported bookings, sometimes on their pod's attainment. How it's calculated differs a lot by company, so ask directly rather than assuming from the base/OTE split alone.
Do I need an engineering degree or a computer science background for this role?
Helpful, not required. Plenty of Solutions Consultants come from technical support, implementation or customer success backgrounds rather than a formal CS degree. What actually matters is comfort with technical concepts under pressure, and most interview processes for this role test that directly with a mock demo or a live technical scenario rather than a resume line.
This was a sample. Your resume should be tailored to the real thing.
Rezi Ninja reads an actual job posting and rewrites your resume to match it, with a Ninja Score so you know it lands before you hit send. Free to start, with the AI usage included.