Solutions Engineer, SLED

Available Locations: Austin, TX
What you'll do as a Solutions Engineer
You are the technical lynchpin through the entire sales cycle - pre-sales and account technical leadership. You will work closely with our Public Sector prospects and customers to educate, empower, and ensure their success on the Cloudflare platform. Your technical expertise in Cloudflare's global distributed network and technology will allow you to find best-fit solutions for prospects, to train and onboard new customers via video-conference or in person, create documentation, and to support the long-term technology strategy of the customer.
As a Public Sector SE you will need to have strong technical knowledge of both on premise security and networking implementations and public cloud initiatives common to US Public Sector customers.You are the technical customer advocate within Cloudflare and will work closely with every team at Cloudflare, from Sales and Product, through to Engineering and Customer Support.
What we look for in our Solutions Engineers
Our Solutions Engineers come from a wide range of backgrounds: financial consulting, engineering, software development, product management, customer support, and project delivery. We're serious about building a diverse team. When hiring we look for diversity of experience combined with genuine curiosity for our technology.
Ultimately, you are passionate about technology and have the ability to explain complex technical concepts in easy-to-understand terms. You are naturally curious, and an avid builder who is not afraid to get your hands dirty. You appreciate the diversity of challenges in working with customers, and look forward to helping them realize the full promise of Cloudflare. On the Solutions Engineering team, you will find a collaborative environment where everyone brings different strengths and jumps in to help each other.
Responsibilities

• As critical members of Cloudflare's Public Sector Sales team, Solutions Engineers drive technical discussions and implementations to help generate new business, expand existing business, and keep our customers happy.
• In business generation and expansion, you'll be tasked with qualification of prospect and customer use cases, technical requirements discovery, leading demonstrations, solution identification and design, and collaborative work on proofs-of-concept (PoCs).
• For our existing customers, Solutions Engineers are part of a dedicated account team that advises the customer on technical best practices, implementation of Cloudflare products and features, and strategic guidance.
• The role is focused on our territory segment within SLED and as such may require some travel but the majority of engagement will be done via remote mechanisms. Generally, the role requires 30-40% travel to attend meetings with prospects or customers, attend conferences and other industry events, and to collaborate with your Cloudflare teammates.

Requirements

• Demonstrated understanding in internet technologies: OSI Model layers 1-7,Routing TCP/UDP, DNS (authoritative and recursive), HTTP(S), SSL / TLS.
• Comfort with on premise infrastructure and networking configurations, including potential legacy systems or methodologies.
• Minimum 1-2 years of experience in a customer-facing sales or consulting role (note: doesn't have to be in tech)
• Technical curiosity and passion: Cloudflare is at the cutting edge of internet technology, and our Solutions Engineers are viewed as subject-matter experts. It's incumbent on us to stay up to date not only with Cloudflare's specific products, but with industry trends.
• A focus on learning, teaching, collaboration, mentorship, and growth, not only personally but also within the team and company.
• Aside from technical and collaborative skills, we place a high value on project management, relationship building, and EQ.

Desired

• You understand the role of a firewall, the difference between L3, L4, and L7 firewalls, and that 'ACL' doesn't always mean Anterior Cruciate Ligament.
• You're not afraid of command-line interfaces, RESTful APIs, or analyzing HTTP request and response in a browser's web inspector.
• An undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field. Reminder: this is not a strict requirement at all. Candidates from all walks of life are welcome.
• As part of our engagement, we expect our engineers to have a foundational understanding of AI, be actively exploring or building AI-driven capabilities, and be focused on empowering their prospects and customers to adopt AI in impactful, practical ways.

Bonus Points

• Graduate-level degrees in Computer Science, Engineering or related fields. Reminder: this is not a strict requirement at all. Candidates from all walks of life are welcome.
• Certifications: Azure/AWS/GCP Architect, etc.

More About You

• You can translate technical concepts and jargon for a wide variety of audiences: from systems engineers, to front-end developers, through to IT managers and C-levels in enterprise organizations.
• You want to be constantly learning new things and teaching what you've learned to the broader team through internal and external blog posts, team demos, and product training sessions.
• You have a knack for understanding problems and finding creative ways to solve them. Our product suite is ever-growing, and knowing how to identify which parts will solve a customer's particular problem is important.
• You understand how to manage a project, work to deadlines, and prioritize between competing demands.