Strategic Sales Engineer
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
- 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