Director of Sales Engineering

Kai•Chicago, IL

3d•Remote

About The Position

Kai is hiring a Director of Sales Engineering to lead its North America sales engineering team. This fully remote, field-based position is for someone located in a major U.S. metropolitan area; Chicago and New York City are preferred. The role reports to the Vice President, Solution Engineering and partners with sales leadership on forecasting and the technical aspects of key deals. This is a hands-on leadership role. The Director will lead a team of six sales engineers and scale the team to twice its current size while building the processes, enablement, proof-of-value framework, and demo infrastructure needed for the function. The Director will also work directly on important deals, represent the technical forecast, coordinate with Sales, Product, and Engineering, and bring field feedback to Product and Engineering.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience leading a solutions engineering or sales engineering team as a first-line people leader.
Experience owning a sales forecast and the methodology behind it.
Strong organization and project management skills, with the ability to bring structure to a team.
Enterprise cybersecurity experience and credibility across security domains.
Technical SaaS selling experience.
A track record selling to large enterprise accounts, including complex, multi-stakeholder deals.
Startup experience bringing new, category-defining technology to market.
Hands-on technical depth to run a demo, scope a proof of value, and engage credibly with security architects, SOC leaders, and CISOs.
Located in a major U.S. metropolitan area and able to travel up to 50% of the time.

Nice To Haves

Experience scaling a sales engineering team through rapid growth.
Experience owning a defined region or territory as a leader.
Background in detection and response, vulnerability management, exposure management, security operations, or the AI SOC space.
Experience with a formal enterprise sales methodology such as MEDDICC/MEDDPICC, Force Management, Challenger, or similar.
Prior involvement in building or refining a proof-of-value framework or sales engineering playbook.
Experience partnering closely with post-sales and customer success teams.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a team of sales engineers covering enterprise accounts.
Own the technical side of the forecast and represent it in weekly sales meetings.
Hold the team accountable for deal management and pipeline hygiene in Salesforce.
Hire and onboard sales engineers as the team grows, and raise the bar for new hires.
Participate in high-impact field deals as the technical authority.
Build the enablement, proof-of-value framework, and demo infrastructure needed by the function.
Drive operational excellence with Sales and Product counterparts.
Run cross-functional projects from scoping through delivery.
Bring field intelligence back to Product and Engineering.