Vector Database Senior Sales Engineer

Job description

**Company Background** Actian is a global leader in hybrid data management, cloud data warehousing, and data integration technologies. Trusted by world-class organizations such as Bloomberg, Intuit, Lufthansa, and Citibank, we help businesses solve their most complex data challenges and drive transformation through innovative solutions. Actian puts our greatest asset, our people, at the center and offers employees the opportunity to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment focused on shared success. At Actian, we believe in culture add and don’t subscribe to ideologies limiting people’s potential. We don’t want people to work here – we want them to belong here. With a vision of being the most trusted, flexible, and easy-to-use data platform, our product portfolio includes the most performant data management, data integration, and data analytics products on the market. Customers use our cloud-native data platform to unify their data, explore and securely exchange data to run various analytic workloads that provide real-time business insights at a fraction of the cost. Twenty-four (24) Fortune 100 companies use Actian technology in some of the most mission-critical applications that impact your daily life. Join our team and be at the forefront of innovation and creativity as we shape this market. **Job Description** We are seeking a Subject Matter Expert (SME) Sales Engineer with deep, hands-on expertise in Vector AI databases and a proven track record of selling advanced database and data analytics solutions. This candidate brings specialized knowledge in modern AI/ML data infrastructure to partner with the Sales team and function as the key technical authority and enabler for complex, AI-focused software deals. Beyond direct sales support, this SME role is pivotal in elevating the entire Sales Engineering organization through technical mentoring, architectural guidance, and enablement of the broader SE team across global regions. A significant portion of this role includes leading deep technical discussions, architecting sophisticated solutions, demonstrating Actian's Vector DB capabilities in competitive contexts, and guiding the execution of proof-of-concepts at enterprise scale. This includes working with customers and partners to understand how their AI/ML initiatives intersect with their data challenges, mapping Actian's vector-first and multi-model database capabilities to those needs and providing authoritative competitive analysis that positions our offerings against specialized vector database vendors. Candidate brings deep expertise in vector databases (Milvus, Qdrant, and other vectorized databases as they emerge), RAG architectures, and LangChain integrations, combined with broad experience in relational, analytics, and multi-model database systems. They possess profound insight into the Vector AI development landscape and understand the emerging patterns in enterprise AI data infrastructure. Will have the strategic vision to connect customers' most ambitious AI/ML challenges with Actian's differentiated solution, the customer-facing excellence to communicate complex technical concepts to C-level and technical audiences alike, and the depth of technical knowledge to provide trusted architectural guidance and act as a true technical advisor. This person is energized by mentoring and developing Sales Engineers at all levels, sharing knowledge across global teams, and building organizational capability around vector database solutions and AI-driven data architecture. They have the flexibility and intellectual curiosity to navigate cutting-edge technologies, the initiative to drive both customer success and internal enablement, and the collaborative spirit to work seamlessly with sales teams, product, engineering, and customer success across regions and time zones. ### What You Will Be Doing: Be a technical guide on all aspects of Actian – with a primary focus on AI and Data Analytics becoming the Subject Matter Expert (SME) Sales Engineer for AI Databases within Actian. · Collaborate with the Sales team to find and close new business opportunities · Provide strategic pre-sales support for sales activities including needs analysis, technology review, requirements definition, and scoping · Create and deliver world-class product presentations and demonstrations to meet prospect, customer, or internal needs · Work with customers on proof-of-concept projects in a competitive environment · Maintain deep understanding of competitive and complementary technologies and vendors and how to position Actian in relation to them · Provide guidance on how to resolve customer-specific technical challenges · Collaborate with Product Management, Engineering, and Marketing to continuously improve Actian’s products and marketing. · Become an expert in our products’ features, benefits, presentations, and application to customer needs · Provide proactive support to customers and prospects with the goal of facilitating sales · Establish and maintain positive customer relationships, and follow-up on opportunities · Be the customer advocate and liaison for product management and development · Other related duties as assigned ### What You Bring to Actian: · Minimum 5 years of experience working with customers in a pre-sales or post-sales technical role · Bachelor’s, or higher, in computer science, engineering, mathematics or related fields, or equivalent experience · Outstanding skills presenting to both technical and executive audiences, whether impromptu on a whiteboard or using presentations and demos · Strong skills in databases, data warehouses, and data processing · Extensive hands-on expertise with SQL and SQL analytics · Experience and track record of success selling data and/or analytics software to enterprise customers; includes proven skills identifying key stakeholders, winning value propositions, and compelling events · Experience with relational and large-scale analytics database technology (e.g. Oracle, Informix, SQL Server, Snowflake, Netezza, Teradata, etc.) - **\*\*MUST HAVE\*\*: Hands-on production experience with Milvus and/or Qdrant vector databases** - Demonstrated expertise in RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) architectures and LangChain integration - Deep knowledge of Vector AI development landscape, including embedding models, vector search algorithms, and modern AI/ML infrastructure patterns - Solid background with multi-model databases and proven experience architecting solutions that seamlessly blend vector, relational, and analytical workloads · Experience and understanding of large-scale infrastructure-as-a-service platforms (e.g. Google Cloud Platform, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure) · Familiarity and experience with common BI and data exploration tools (e.g. PowerBI, Looker, Tableau, etc.)