Diary of a Sales Engineer

You can prepare every slide and still forget to ask for the next step. Fresh off their own job searches, Ryan Krueger and Sameer Sahay-Kausar break down sales engineer interviews, from building relationships before asking for a referral to handling technical questions you can't answer. They share practical ways to stand out in discovery, demo presentations, and follow-ups, while figuring out whether the company is somewhere you want to work.

What actually comes next after becoming a Solutions Engineer?

For most SEs, the obvious answers are bigger accounts or management. Chris Clark thinks that's way too limiting.

Chris spent 15 years in Solutions Engineering at companies including Slack, Salesforce, and Glean before moving into career coaching full time. We brought him on to talk through the different paths available to SEs and, more importantly, how to figure out which one is actually right for you.

We get into Field CTO and evangelist roles, specialist IC paths, leadership vs. management, how AI is changing the SE role, and why you shouldn't build your career around chasing titles.

Chris also puts Ryan and Sameer through a live career coaching exercise that leads to a slightly dangerous conclusion about Ryan's future as an AE.

The biggest takeaway: figure out what work gives you energy, start doing more of it, and don't wait for someone else to design your career for you.

Find Chris:
https://www.chrisjamesclark.co.uk/
Pre-Sales Pathfinder: https://app.chrisjamesclark.co.uk/
Podcast: Pre-Sales Pathways

Curtis Breidenthal is Enterprise Solutions Manager at Ramp. He got there with a kinesiology degree, no coding background, and a resume that started with bagging groceries.

Curtis takes us through the whole climb: chat support at Bill.com, a cross country bet on himself, and the months he spent training for a sales engineering job that had not opened yet. He gets into what he had to unlearn from customer support to be good at presales, why the best demo is often the one you never show, and the single word that cost him an extra follow up call with a buyer. We also dig into the AI slop problem in sales, what actually changes when you move from commercial to enterprise, and the one skill from his support days that he says separates good SEs from great ones.

If you are trying to break into sales engineering, or you are an SE weighing the jump to enterprise or into management, this is the one to put on.

Diary of a Sales Engineer is available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.

www.diaryofasalesengineer.com

RIP traditional presales. Ryan Krueger and Sameer Sahay-Kausar sit down to map what is actually replacing it, and what the shift means for your career as a sales engineer.

We get into why "pre-sales" is a label that no longer fits, the new roles taking shape (we coin a couple live, the account engineer and the forward deploy solution engineer), and how consumption-based pricing quietly rewires everything about how solutions engineers create value. We also dig into why SEs are already writing and shipping code to fix product gaps, the three dials every SE has to balance, and how leaders should be thinking about team building in this chaos. There is also a simple, freeing takeaway about switching industries and why saying "I don't know" makes you more credible, not less.

If you are a sales engineer, solutions consultant, forward deployed engineer, or an SE leader trying to stay ahead of where the role is going, this one is for you.

Diary of a Sales Engineer is available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.

www.diaryofasalesengineer.com

In Episode 36 of Diary of a Sales Engineer, Ryan and Sameer discuss how sales engineers can handle difficult prospects, skeptical buyers, technical roadblocks, and prickly internal stakeholders.

They break down the difference between buyers who have been burned before, people who create roadblocks, and stakeholders who simply show up in a bad mood.

The episode covers audience management, technical objections, InfoSec and architecture conversations, follow-up discipline, internal relationships with product and engineering, and how SEs can stay calm while protecting deal momentum.

Ryan Krueger and Sameer Sahay-Kausar are back with a deep dive on how sales engineers actually win the biggest deals of their careers. Whether you're working a $100K opportunity that's the largest your team has ever seen or a million dollar enterprise deal, the framework is the same and it starts with people, not technology.

In this conversation, we get into how to identify who really has the power inside a buying committee, how to build a champion who sells for you when you're not in the room, and why pushing back on prospects can be the move that earns you the deal. Ryan shares why every big deal will give you "blisters" and what to do when your champion goes dark for three months. We also unpack the difference between hard savings and soft savings, and why the way most sales teams pitch ROI makes CFOs roll their eyes.

If you're a sales engineer, AE, or anyone working complex enterprise deals and trying to figure out how to navigate the politics, the timing, and the approval gates that come with seven-figure contracts, this one is for you.

Diary of a Sales Engineer is available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.

www.diaryofasalesengineer.com

Jeff Wang is the CEO of Windsurf (now part of Cognition) and a former solutions engineer who rode the SE skill set all the way to the top of one of the most high-profile AI startups in the industry. He sits down with Ryan and Sameer to talk about what that journey actually looked like.

You'll hear how Jeff built automation bots that saved his teams hundreds of hours, why he started blogging about AI to land his first role in the space, and how Windsurf structured an entirely new set of engineering roles that are reshaping how companies think about presales and post-sales. We also get into what it takes to close enterprise deals when nobody knows your name, what product market fit really feels like versus what people assume, and Jeff's advice for SEs who want to build something of their own.

If you're thinking about your next career move in presales, or you're curious about how the sales engineering role is evolving in the age of AI agents and forward deployed teams, this one's for you.

Diary of a Sales Engineer is available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.www.diaryofasalesengineer.com

Ryan's LinkedIn post went viral: "If your SE has never told you no, you don't have a partner. You have an order taker." In Episode 33, Ryan and Sameer turn that into a full playbook for saying no with confidence.

They cover how to shift your identity from technical resource to strategic partner, how to negotiate with your AE rather than just blocking ideas, how to use curiosity to give hard feedback without creating conflict, and why knowing when to kill a deal is just as important as knowing how to close one.

Packed with tactical, real-world advice for SEs at every stage of their career. Don't let your ego get in the way of success.

Sales engineering career advice and go-to-market strategy with James Kaikis, co-founder of Pre-Sales Collective, founder of GTM Shift, and co-founder of Solution Exec and AI Sales Studio.

The predictable revenue model that defined B2B SaaS for the last decade is breaking down. AI-first companies are collapsing the traditional sales cycle. Roles are merging. Swim lanes are blurring. And sales engineers are sitting in the best position to capitalize on all of it.

James shares the full story behind his exit from Pre-Sales Collective, what he learned running revenue as a CRO at Testbox, and why he came back to entrepreneurship to build three businesses: GTM Shift (consulting and events for go-to-market leaders), AI Sales Studio (AI proficiency training for GTM teams), and Solution Exec (a private network for senior solutions executives). He also announces that he and Jeff Margolese are writing a book on solutions engineering.

We get into the tactical stuff too. How to build a career roadmap from SE to CRO. Why lateral moves to account management or sales matter more than people realize. How to prepare for the convergence of SE, AE, CS, and professional services roles. And why the SEs who treat themselves as students of the game will be the ones who thrive in the next era of B2B.

Ryan also shares his prediction on the emergence of the "account engineer" role, and we talk openly about work-life balance, setting boundaries, and being present at home while building a career in tech sales.

This one is personal for us. James and the Pre-Sales Collective are the reason Ryan broke into sales engineering. 32 episodes later, here we are.

If this episode hits home, send us a message. Those notes from listeners are the reason we do this.

2025 didn’t redefine presales overnight, but it made the direction impossible to ignore.

In this episode, we look back on what we accomplished this year and unpack the real ways the presales role evolved over the last 12 months. The fundamentals are still there, but expectations, scope, and impact are moving faster than many teams realize.

We share where we believe presales is heading, what strong teams are already leaning into, and the skills that are becoming harder to ignore as we move into 2026.

We also take on the growing conversation around Forward Deployed Engineers. What the role actually means, why it keeps surfacing in presales conversations, and why the industry needs a clearer, more honest discussion about how it fits into modern GTM teams.

We close by thanking everyone who listened, watched, shared, and challenged us throughout 2025. This community continues to shape the conversations we care about most.

Presales didn’t flip overnight in 2025, but the direction became impossible to ignore. This episode breaks down what shifted and why it matters.