Principal Solution Engineer

Certinia • Austin, TX

2d • Remote

About The Position

The Principal Solution Engineer is a senior individual contributor and solution expert for Certinia’s most complex opportunities, particularly those involving Professional Services Automation and AI capabilities. The role partners with Account Executives from initial discovery through value realization, leads executive-level demonstrations and value narratives, and sets the standard for how the Solution Engineering team sells. It also helps develop and share AI-enabled approaches, assets, and practices that improve the presales process.

The successful candidate brings services-industry credibility, executive presence, and curiosity about how AI is changing both the products Certinia sells and the way the company sells them. The role uses AI tools daily while applying sound judgment about where human oversight is needed, and is expected to experiment, pilot, measure, and share effective AI practices across the team. The position is US-remote and may require up to 50% travel.

Requirements

• 5–7 years of experience as a presales professional supporting enterprise applications, or equivalent years in professional services or customer success leadership, with deep domain expertise.
• Strong presentation skills and executive-level customer-facing acumen.
• Ability to build and deliver quantified value narratives, not just product demonstrations.
• Comfort evaluating and positioning AI agent and agentic workflow capabilities to enterprise buyers, including explaining where human oversight matters.
• Experience with, or desire to work with, rapidly changing technology.
• Ability to multitask, communicate priorities, and manage time effectively.
• Willingness to travel up to 50%.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Professional Services Automation solutions.
• Experience with Salesforce CRM and the Salesforce platform.
• Domain expertise in professional services or customer success organizations.
• Previous experience in a sales organization at a software company.
• Hands-on experience demonstrating, configuring, or building with an AI agent, copilot, or automation platform; coding is not required.
• Experience with competing or adjacent ERP and PSA applications such as NetSuite OpenAir, Kantata, Rocketlane, Workday, Oracle Fusion, SAP, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Conduct structured, executive-level discovery to understand customer and prospect requirements and priorities.
• Partner with Account Executives to deliver engaging, value-centric demonstrations and executive readouts using the Tell–Show–Tell methodology.
• Co-own strategic opportunities as the solution expert across new-business and ongoing customer cycles, engaging finance, operations, delivery, and IT stakeholders.
• Build quantified value narratives and business-case models connecting platform capabilities to outcomes for CFOs and COOs.
• Lead or support responses to RFIs, RFPs, and security questionnaires for strategic pursuits.
• Position Certinia’s Veda AI capabilities and agentic workflows in customer evaluations, explaining current capabilities, safe autonomy, and human-in-the-loop practices.
• Help customers assess governance, data security, and risk relating to AI agents, and address technical and executive buyer questions.
• Demonstrate how Veda works across Certinia’s PSA, FM, and CS solutions on its Salesforce-native platform.
• Track competitor claims and packaging of agentic capabilities and help the team respond accurately.
• Use AI tools to improve presales work, including preparing discovery, researching accounts and competitors, and drafting and tailoring value decks and demo narratives.
• Design, pilot, and refine AI-assisted presales approaches, including account identification and qualification, discovery support, and faster value prototyping and trials.
• Create and share reusable AI prompts, agents, templates, and playbooks.
• Partner with Product, Sales Operations, and Enablement to measure pilot impact and determine which approaches should scale.
• Develop expertise in Certinia solutions, the Salesforce platform, partner applications, and the competitive landscape.
• Mentor and coach Solution Engineers on discovery, demo strategy, executive presentation, and AI positioning.
• Contribute to enablement initiatives, demo environments and scripts, and competitive battlecards.
• Build platform configurations, extensions, and solution accelerators for customer business problems, and work with Product to assess whether they should become standard capabilities.
• Provide structured, deal-grounded market and field feedback to Product Management.
• Partner with Marketing and Alliances on field events and pipeline-generating activity.

Benefits

• Flexible work environment, with remote, hybrid, and flexible scheduling options for many roles.
• Wellness program with a monthly stipend toward gym memberships, mental health resources, or fitness equipment.
• Access to wellness apps.
• Opportunity to shape how a leading Salesforce-native PSA platform is sold in the age of agentic AI.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed