[loydb]

If you want a base salary that high, move into Product Management or Sales/Sales Engineering. Maybe Data Analytics/Engineering if you're really good at math and find the right company.

Or, as others have said, start your own company.

[DeanWormer]

I agree with this and have experience with the Sales Engineering side of it. Any enterprise software company needs a field sales team with technical people to back up the sales reps. Sales Engineers or Solution Architects own the "technical close" of a deal. Once the customer says your technology solves their problems and they're not looking at any competitors, your job is done. Rarely do you have to do any salesy activity like negotiating contracts, "closing deals", cold calling etc.

You give demos, proof of concepts, and talk shop with your customers. Most of it can be done remotely, but for important customers, you travel in your territory. As long as you're close to an airport, you're good.

Base + Commission can be easily $250k plus equity.

[omosubi]

What exactly is sales engineering? I have never understood this term or what the work these people do is. To be fair I haven't spent much time looking into it but any insight you have is appreciated

[nathanfig]

It goes by a lot of names (sales consulting, solution engineering, sales engineering, etc) but sales engineer is probably the best literal descriptor: basically your job is to go to prospective customers and engage their engineers/architects and work with them to solve their problems using your company’s software or techniques. If you do a good job, the prospect signs up and you make a commission. Engagements vary- you might just be presenting slides, or you may be writing code to implement proofs of concept. Usually report to sales, which can be good or bad depending on sales culture at your company.

It can be a lot of pressure since it is a customer facing role and requires being able to solve technical problems on your feet (not unlike a whiteboard interview at times). Requires you to learn quickly (may have to consult on software that hasn’t been released yet and has no documentation, better be good at reading code and asking questions). Also often requires a lot of travel, hence remote okay.

If you’re a sociable engineer who likes variety and to travel, it’s definitely a good role to check out. If you meet your commission targets you will probably make significantly more than you would in a strictly salaried engineering role. Can be really flexible since work is largely driven by customer demand, just be prepared for some really intense weeks and late nights preparing for critical engagements.

[mnemotronic]

In my limited (2 years) experience, the pre-sales engineer, "solution architect" is someone who knows the product and about 85% of the client's environment and requirements. Their job is to say "Our product can meet all your requirements easily. I could code it up in a week." The sales staff moves in and gets the signature, collects the bonus and they and the pre-sales engineers spend the next 5 days on a private beach in the Caribbean. Meanwhile the company's Customer Consulting group sends in a developer and tells them they have a week to understand the requirements and get the thing designed, built, implemented, tested and signed off by the client. By the 2nd day on-site, the developer discovers a customer requirement missed by the pre-sales engineer that will require at least 3 weeks to implement correctly. The developer's boss says "fuck correct and fuck maintainable. Just make it work good enough so they'll let you leave. We're only charging them for a week of consulting". The developer spends 20 hours a day getting something working then leaves the customer with a fragile hodge-podge that mostly works with ideal data as long as the users and IT dept don't do anything unexpected. The developer gets home at 3 am Saturday, does his or her laundry then on Sunday afternoon gets on a plane headed for the next poor schmuck who bought the pre-sales BS.

[loydb]

So, I would describe that as a dysfunctional sales team. I've worked at everything from a 40-person startup to companies with over 100,000 employees. The sales engineers on the teams have been the ones with their hands dirty throughout the entire deal lifecycle, and the first ones on call in the weeks following going live to bug hunt.