Manager, Sales Engineering

Socket•,

1d•$190,000 - $250,000•Remote

About The Position

Socket is seeking a Manager, Sales Engineering to lead the team helping security and engineering buyers understand Socket’s product, validate its value, and choose Socket. This hands-on leadership role involves coaching Sales Engineers to connect software supply chain security to customer priorities, partnering closely with Sales leadership, and building a repeatable technical sales motion that can scale. The manager will hire and develop strong Sales Engineers, improve discovery and proof-of-concept execution, and participate in strategic customer conversations when their experience can materially affect the outcome. Success is defined by building a stronger, more independent team rather than personally rescuing every difficult deal. The role leads a regional Sales Engineering team and implements Socket’s established hiring, onboarding, development, and performance-management practices within the company’s framework and standards. It partners with Sales leaders and Account Executives on deal strategy, qualification, coverage, and prioritization, while helping the team secure technical wins and Sales owns the commercial close. The manager establishes consistent evaluation practices, inspects strategic deals and stalled evaluations, supports technical customer conversations, and turns effective practices into reusable demos, playbooks, and onboarding. The role also represents field needs to Product and Engineering, partners with Technical Account Managers and Customer Success on pre-to-post-sales handoffs, and reports on team performance metrics. Socket is remote-first and offers quarterly team off-sites. The role requires willingness to travel up to 25%.

Requirements

7+ years as a Sales Engineer or Solutions Engineer.
2+ years directly managing Sales Engineers, including hiring and ramping them.
Experience leading technical sales for commercial or enterprise customers from discovery through demos, proof-of-concepts, and technical validation, selling to developers and security teams.
A track record of improving team performance through specific coaching and operating changes rather than taking over difficult deals.
Technical credibility in CI/CD, package managers, the open source ecosystem, and developer workflows, with comfort using Linux and scripting in Python or JavaScript or a similar language.
Experience building or materially improving pre-sales systems such as evaluation frameworks, coverage models, demo standards, or onboarding.
Experience managing through growth at a startup where processes and resources were still evolving.
Strong partnership with Sales leadership, including prioritizing support, constructively challenging weak qualification, and distinguishing technical validation from close probability.
Clear communication with practitioners, CISOs, engineering leaders, and executives.
Willingness to travel up to 25%.

Nice To Haves

Experience in software supply chain security, application security (AppSec), DevSecOps, or software composition analysis (SCA).
Experience managing Sales Engineers across more than one segment.
Practical use of automation and AI tools to improve Sales Engineering productivity, with sound judgment about accuracy and customer data.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and grow a regional Sales Engineering team.
Implement established hiring, onboarding, development, and performance-management practices within Socket’s framework and standards; conduct interview loops and help close strong candidates.
Partner with Sales leaders and Account Executives on deal strategy, qualification, coverage, and prioritization, helping the team earn the technical win while Sales owns the commercial close.
Implement a consistent evaluation motion with agreed success criteria, customer owners, timelines, technical risk tracking, and documented outcomes.
Inspect strategic deals and stalled evaluations, identify blockers, coach Sales Engineers, and escalate product or implementation gaps with clear context.
Stay technical enough to support demos, integrations, and complex customer conversations, and turn effective approaches into reusable demos, playbooks, and onboarding.
Represent the voice of the field to Product and Engineering, and partner with Technical Account Managers and Customer Success on pre-to-post-sales handoffs.
Report on technical win rate, proof-of-concept durations and starts, and quota attainment; identify problems and develop informed improvement strategies.
Hire and develop Sales Engineers and improve discovery and proof-of-concept execution.
Travel up to 25%.