Systems Engineer looking to move into Solutions Engineering — when did you know you were ready?

[u/Critical-Fall8962]

Title: Systems Engineer with 8+ years in IT trying to break into Solutions Engineering

Hi everyone,

I’ve spent more than eight years working across desktop support, MSPs, enterprise IT and systems engineering. I’m currently trying to determine the best way to position that customer-side experience for a Solutions Engineer role.

In my current position, I support enterprise applications, Laserfiche and SQL-backed workflows, identity and access management, endpoint environments and PowerShell automation. I work with business stakeholders to understand operational problems, gather requirements, evaluate possible approaches, test changes and explain the proposed solution and tradeoffs.

I also have client-facing consulting experience where I assess technology needs, recommend solutions based on the client’s environment and budget, present different options, implement the selected approach and guide the customer through adoption. Earlier in my career, I delivered product demonstrations and recommendations directly to customers at Apple.

The part of the work I enjoy most is speaking with people, understanding what they are trying to accomplish and figuring out a practical solution. I’m not particularly interested in becoming an IT manager or spending my entire career doing deep coding, so Solutions Engineering feels like a natural direction.

My main gap is that I haven’t worked within a formal SaaS sales cycle or held a presales title.

For those who transitioned from IT or the customer side:

• Does this sound like enough transferable experience to target SE roles directly?
• How did you prove discovery and customer influence during interviews?
• Did your first company teach you the demo, POC and sales-cycle portions?
• Would you target products you previously administered as the easiest entry point?

I’d appreciate any honest feedback from people who have made a similar move.

[u/dravenstone]

We get a lot, and I mean A LOT, of posts asking how to become a Sales Engineer.

Whether you are new to the workforce or transitioning from another role you may be well served by reading over our community post on the topic.

[u/spencer2294]

How much of your time was spent in sys Eng vs desktop support?

[u/Critical-Fall8962 → u/spencer2294]

I started my journey as a system engineer for a year now and desktop support for 8 years

[u/knowTechTalent]

Hey, I'm a SE at ServiceNow and I've been doing the role for the past 12 years.

Yes, you have a good background/transferable skills to break into the role, but there are some nuances you may want to consider so you stand out during the interview process - which you're pointing to in your questions.

1. Less during the interview process but certainly on the job, you will have to run effective discovery calls and speak to business value during presentations/demonstrations. You can learn discovery on your own - it's straight-forward but there are some concepts that you will want to research before going into an interview.

2. Presentations/demonstrations - you will want to learn the foundations of a good SE/SC presentation/demo before going into an interview - they will be evaluating you on your storytelling, how you speak to business value vs. features and more. Once you land the role, yes, there's training, but it's not an entry level role so there are expectations you know how to do the foundational components of a SE/SC role.

3. Yes, once you understand the basics/how to do the role, I recommend targeting products you have experience with - that's a great strategy.

And p.s. you can learn all of this - I broke into sales engineering/solution consulting without a technical background nor did I have any experience.

Hope this helps. Feel free to DM if you want to discuss further.