SALES ENGINEER JOB

Sales Engineer is a job/role found primarily in enterprise software, hardware or professional services companies. The role serves to bridge the gap between sales acumen and engineering expertise.
Initially, the products or services a company sold were easily understood by sales reps, who could represent these without assistance on sales calls. Any questions a prospect (potential customer) had could be addressed by the sales rep. As technology became more complex, generalists were replaced by specialists.
Sales reps, however, did not develop specializations. This break from a single sales rep being able to handle all aspects of the sale to one which he/she needed assistance was what brought about Relationship Selling, or Strategic Selling. The enterprise sales rep developed skills that got meetings with strategic buyers, but the sales rep was only expected to explain the solution at a high level, leaving the more technical aspects to be explained by the Sales Engineer.
A key differentiator between Sales Engineers and other roles within the Sales organization is that a Sales Engineer is not usually compensated by salary plus commission as most Account Representatives are. Instead Sales Engineers are compensated with a strong base salary plus bonus. The bonus can be based upon the revenue generated within an assigned territory, set up as a Management By Objective(MBO) bonus, or a combination of the two.
Sales Engineers spend 20-50% of their time traveling and work a flexible schedule due to the needs of the Sales organization they support. Most Sales Engineers telecommute or spend a limited amount of time in the office.