• 8+ years of experience in technical pre-sales (Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Field Engineer) for infrastructure software, including 3+ years directly managing SEs.
• Proven record of hiring and developing SEs and measurably improving technical win rate or POC conversion.
• Deep, hands-on expertise in cloud-native technologies, including Kubernetes, agentic infrastructure, service mesh (such as Istio), and API gateways (such as Envoy), along with L4/L7 networking, mTLS, and zero-trust security.
• Experience selling to enterprise platform engineering, infrastructure, and security teams on complex, multi-stakeholder deals.
• Experience in an open source or open-core sales motion, converting community users into enterprise customers.
• Fluency in a formal sales methodology (MEDDPICC, Command of the Message, or similar) and the ability to coach a team to use it.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to engage both principal engineers and executive buyers.
• Located in the Central or West US, with willingness to travel to customers and events in region.
• Experience with Gateway API, Cilium/eBPF, or another API gateway or service mesh product is a plus.
• Working knowledge of AI/LLM workloads or agent infrastructure (model gateways, MCP/A2A, agent access governance) is a plus.
• Background at a CNCF-ecosystem or open-core infrastructure company, or experience in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, telco), is a plus.
• A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.