Solutions Engineering Manager

Job description

Voice AI that resolves, not transfers. Most phone systems trap callers in menus and scripts. Vapi is the platform for deploying voice agents that know your business and can listen, adapt, and resolve in minutes. - The numbers: 1 billion calls. 1 million developers. 10x enterprise ARR growth - The customers: Amazon Ring, ServiceTitan, New York Life, Intuit, Kavak, and thousands more, from YC startups to the Fortune 500 - The news: a $50M Series B led by Peak XV Partners, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Y Combinator, and our earlier backers. Total raised: $72M Why We’re Hiring This Role: Vapi is moving deeper into enterprise, where every serious deal runs through a technical evaluation: architecture reviews, customer-specific demos, and working POCs. Our first Solutions Architects are on board and the enterprise pipeline is growing faster than individual contributors can carry it. We need someone to build the function, not just staff it. You'll own hiring, POC standards, demo assets, and how the team pairs with AEs. This is a player-coach role with real scope to define how Vapi sells to the enterprise. What You’ll Do: 30 days - Learn the product from the inside - Build an agent yourself, wire up a telephony integration, and sit in on live enterprise deals. - Meet every SE, AE, and the founders. Map current deal coverage and find where evaluations stall today. - Get fluent in the architecture: telephony, LLM orchestration, integrations, and contact center workflows. 60 days - Set the standard, stay in deals - Own the hiring plan and start closing candidates. You know what a great SE looks like and can sell them on the role. - Define standards for discovery, demos, and POC scoping so deal quality doesn't depend on who picks up the deal. - Stay hands-on in the two or three largest opportunities as a player-coach. 90 days - Run the function - Manage capacity and deal assignment. - Review POCs before they ship and coach the team on live calls. - Build the reusable artifact library: reference architectures, integration patterns, and objection responses. - Own the numbers that matter, like technical win rate and time to go-live, and feed repeated product gaps back to engineering with data. Who You Are: - You have 6+ years in a technical customer-facing role and 2+ years managing Sales Engineers or Solutions Architects, ideally through a stage where the team doubled. - You've hired SEs before, and you can tell the difference between a polished demo and a strong engineer inside one interview loop. - You can build a working integration, read an API response, and debug a customer's webhook without pulling in engineering. - You have experience with voice, telephony, or contact center infrastructure, such as SIP, Twilio, Genesys, Five9, or similar systems. - You're comfortable in the room with both engineers and executives, and you coach your team to adjust the level of detail without dumbing things down. - You're energized by technical sales: discovery, architecture, POCs, objection handling, and helping customers get live. How We Work: - Build something worthy of love - Craft matters. We aim to build products and experiences customers genuinely love, not just tolerate. - Commit and follow through - We finish what we start and build trust by being people others can count on. - Why not today? - We value urgency and momentum. The fastest path to customer value usually wins. - Seek raw input - We go directly to customers, data, and teammates instead of relying on summaries or assumptions. - It’s our problem - We operate as one team. We share credit, own mistakes together, and support each other when things get hard. - Be direct and kind - We give feedback clearly, respectfully, and without delay. Why Vapi: - Generational impact: Build the human interface for every business - Ownership culture: Many of us are previous founders - Kind team: The founders, Jordan and Nikhil, are Canadians - Tier-1 Investors: YC, KP seed, Bessemer Series A What We Offer: - Real stake: We offer a competitive salary and excellent equity ownership - Comprehensive health coverage: Medical, dental, and vision plans - Team love: We love hanging out, and we do quarterly off-sites - Flexible time off: Take what you need - More: Catered meals, transportation, gym, and a $10k annual L&D budget