Enterprise Solutions Engineer

Job description

Enterprise Solutions Engineer Reports To: Taylor Hyde https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-hyde/ – VP, Sales Location(s): San Francisco preferred (3–5 days in office); open to remote Title: Enterprise Solutions Engineer Experience Level: Individual Contributor Function: Pre-Sales | Solutions Engineering Core Product: Bland AI – Enterprise Voice AI Agent Platform Business Model: Platform fee (tiered) + consumption-based per-minute pricing Total Funding: $100M+ raised; most recent $50M Series C led by Dell Technologies Capital About Bland AI Bland AI is the enterprise voice AI platform built for organizations with high-volume, complex customer conversations. Founded by Sobhan Nejad and Isaiah Granet in San Francisco, Bland built its own voice models and infrastructure from the ground up to solve the latency, reliability, and control challenges that have historically limited enterprise adoption of voice AI. Today, Bland powers more than 3.5 million calls per week across regulated industries and has raised over $100M to accelerate its mission of building the most secure enterprise platform for high-stakes customer interactions. Today, Bland's platform fully resolves up to 65% of inbound calls autonomously—handling not just FAQs, but multi-step workflows, authentication, business-rule-based routing, and live data lookups. For large contact center operators, every additional percentage point of autonomous resolution can translate to $500K–$1M+ in annual savings, making the ROI story unusually compelling. Bland's biggest technical differentiator is that it owns and operates the entire voice stack in-house—speech recognition, orchestration, and text-to-speech—rather than stitching together third-party APIs. This architectural approach gives enterprise customers greater reliability, security, governance, and customization, particularly in highly regulated industries. Why This Role Matters Bland is building a more structured pre-sales motion as enterprise demand grows. Today, pre-sales is supported by a founding sales engineer, founders, AEs, and forward-deployed engineers. As the market becomes more competitive, Bland needs Solutions Engineers who can help prospects understand not just what the product does, but why Bland is the right technical and business choice. This is a hands-on IC role focused on technical discovery, demo execution, POV scoping, and technical evaluation. You’ll partner closely with AEs, FDEs, Product, and Engineering to help Bland win enterprise deals by proving value quickly and credibly. This is not a traditional “demo-only” SE role. You’ll be expected to get deep into customer workflows, understand the technical and operational environment, scope POVs tightly, configure compelling demos, and keep evaluations moving with urgency. Role Overview As a Solutions Engineer at Bland, you’ll own the technical side of the sales process from discovery through Proof of Value. You’ll help customers understand where Bland can create ROI, how the platform fits into their existing systems, and what a successful deployment could look like. You’ll be one of the first dedicated SEs at the company, meaning you’ll have the opportunity to shape the motion as it evolves – but the immediate need is execution: running strong discovery, building great demos, managing technical evaluations, and helping enterprise buyers feel confident choosing Bland. Core Responsibilities TECHNICAL DISCOVERY & QUALIFICATION - Lead technical discovery with prospective customers to understand call center workflows, existing systems, integration requirements, operational pain, and AI readiness. - Identify where Bland can deliver the clearest ROI and where the platform is best positioned to win. - Qualify technical fit early so the team invests time in the right opportunities. - Surface Bland’s technical differentiators naturally in discovery, especially around reliability, latency, security, governance, and customization. - Work closely with AEs to define the technical win strategy for each opportunity. DEMO & PROOF OF VALUE EXECUTION - Design and run demos that map directly to a customer’s workflows, not generic product walkthroughs. - Scope POVs around clear success criteria, timelines, milestones, and stakeholder expectations. - Configure custom voice agent demos and technical proof points that show how Bland handles real-world complexity. - Keep POVs focused and commercially relevant, avoiding unnecessary scope creep or “science projects.” - Partner with FDEs and Engineering when deeper technical resources are needed, while protecting their time and keeping the sales process efficient. - Drive urgency throughout the evaluation process by clearly defining next steps, owners, and decision points. TECHNICAL CREDIBILITY & CUSTOMER PRESENCE - Act as a credible technical voice in front of technical buyers, operators, InfoSec teams, procurement, and executive stakeholders. - Explain Bland’s architecture, in-house voice stack, integration approach, and data/security posture in a clear and commercially relevant way. - Support prospects through RFIs, security questionnaires, technical due diligence, and enterprise procurement processes. - Build trust with skeptical buyers by being direct, knowledgeable, and honest about both Bland’s strengths and current limitations. - Help customers understand what is possible today, what requires additional configuration, and what is not the right fit. CROSS-FUNCTIONAL PARTNERSHIP - Partner closely with AEs on discovery, win plans, POV strategy, and deal execution. - Collaborate with FDEs on handoff, resource planning, technical feasibility, and implementation readiness. - Feed product gaps, competitive learnings, customer feedback, and recurring technical objections back to Product and Engineering. - Contribute to demo assets, POV templates, technical documentation, and repeatable pre-sales materials as the motion matures. - Help define what “great” looks like for Solutions Engineering at Bland as the team scales. Ideal Candidate Profile / Role Requirements We’re looking for someone who can sit at the intersection of technical depth, customer presence, and commercial urgency. You should be comfortable going deep with technical buyers, configuring compelling demos, and working side-by-side with sales to move deals forward. You do not need to be an LLM or voice AI expert today, but you should be highly curious, technically sharp, and excited to ramp quickly in one of the fastest-moving categories in AI. Must-Have Experience - 4–8+ years of Solutions Engineering, Sales Engineering, or technical pre-sales experience at a B2B SaaS company. - Experience running technical discovery and supporting enterprise sales cycles. - Has owned or meaningfully contributed to technical POVs, POCs, pilots, or evaluations. - Strong understanding of how to define POV success criteria, manage scope, and keep technical evaluations on track. - Technical enough to configure demos, understand APIs, work with prompts, reason through integrations, and engage credibly with customer engineering or IT teams. - Commercially strong enough to partner closely with AEs and understand how technical work ties back to deal progression. - Comfortable operating in ambiguity at an early-stage or high-growth company. - Genuine interest in AI, LLMs, voice automation, and enterprise workflow transformation. Nice-to-Have Experience - Background at a horizontal platform, developer infrastructure, API, automation, or workflow company. - Experience with voice AI, conversational AI, CPaaS, CCaaS, contact center technology, or customer support automation. - Experience selling into regulated or operationally complex industries such as healthcare, financial services, insurance, logistics, or enterprise support. - Has helped build or improve demo environments, POV frameworks, SE playbooks, or technical evaluation processes. - Startup experience where the pre-sales motion was still being defined. What "Great" Looks Like in This Role - You quickly understand a customer's business, technical environment, and call center workflows, identifying where Bland can drive measurable ROI. - You can articulate why Bland's self-hosted voice infrastructure matters and confidently engage with architects, engineering leaders, security teams, and other highly technical stakeholders. - You intuitively understand both business and technical requirements, identify the fastest path to value, and clearly communicate that plan to the customer. - You build demos that feel tailored to the customer's business—not like a canned product tour. - You scope POVs that are achievable, commercially focused, and tied to clear success criteria, timelines, and buying milestones. - You understand how enterprise customers buy software and tailor technical evaluations to the priorities of executives, operators, engineering, procurement, and InfoSec stakeholders. - You know how to control technical evaluations so they don't drift, stall, or balloon in scope. - You are credible with technical buyers while remaining commercially oriented, partnering closely with AEs to drive the technical win. - You are direct and honest with customers, especially when discussing tradeoffs, security, implementation complexity, and product limitations. - You move with urgency and are never the bottleneck. - Every POV you run makes the next one stronger by documenting learnings, improving the process, and raising the bar for the team. Compensation & Benefits - Significant equity in a high-growth, well-funded AI company - SF-based with strong in-person culture - Full benefits package