Braun Board

Lead Sales Engineer (Remote)

Soda Data · Brooklyn, NY

Base
$160K–$180K
OTE
Not disclosed
Posted
3mo ago

Still open · checked 1h agoon Soda Data's careers page

The job

What you'd do
Technical lead on Soda's largest Fortune 500 data-quality deals: scope PoCs, run architecture and security reviews, and coach new SEs. Remote US, $160K-$180K base.
Who you'd sell to
Still reading the posting. Check back within the hour.
Where deals come from
Not stated in the posting.

The Braun Read

Ask hard questions

Too much is left unsaid. Make them answer before you invest.

Pay
Base is listed but not OTE. Ask what the variable is and how many people hit it.
Transparency
Shares 1 of 5: quota, attainment, deal size, territory, sales cycle.
Pipeline
Doesn't say where pipeline comes from. Ask.
Time on market
Open 96 days. Ask why it's been hard to fill.
Company hiring
2 sales roles open, hiring at a steady pace.

Red lights

None spotted.

Yellow lights

  • Open 90+ days. This role has been posted for three months or more. Ask why it's been hard to fill, and whether anyone left it.

Green lights

None spotted.

Based only on what the posting says. Lights are a starting point for your first call, not a final judgment.

Questions to ask on the first call

Built from what this posting leaves out. How they answer tells you as much as what they say.

  1. 1.

    This role has been open a while. What's made it hard to fill?

    The answer tells you what candidates saw that made them walk.

  2. 2.

    What percentage of fully ramped reps hit quota last year?

    OTE is what you could earn. This is how likely you are to earn it.

  3. 3.

    What's the OTE, and what did the median rep earn last year?

    Base is what you're guaranteed. OTE and the median show the upside.

  4. 4.

    What's the annual quota, and how was it set?

    A quota built from real data is a target. Otherwise it's a hope.

  5. 5.

    Where does pipeline come from: inbound, SDRs, or me?

    Tells you how much of your week is prospecting versus selling.

  6. 6.

    Why is this role open? Did someone leave, or is it new?

    New headcount is growth. A replacement means someone left. Ask why.

› When the offer comes

Save these for later. They land better once they've said yes to you.

  1. 1.

    Can I see the full comp plan in writing, including clawbacks and accelerators?

    What's in writing is what gets paid. Read it before you sign.

  2. 2.

    Can I see the actual comp distribution for the team last year, not just the OTE?

    The spread shows what most reps really take home. OTE is just the target.

  3. 3.

    I'd be walking away from earned commission to join. Is there room for a sign-on bonus to help cover that?

    Leaving money behind is a fair reason to ask. The worst answer is no.

Josh's top five questions for any sales interview →

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Full posting
Data quality is the bottleneck of the AI era. Every Fortune 500 is trying to solve it. We're the team they call. Soda is the data quality layer for Disney, Ralph Lauren, CBRE, HelloFresh, 2K Games, and Nubank. The category is growing rapidly because AI doesn't work on bad data. We're hiring a remote Lead Sales Engineer to own the technical side of our biggest enterprise deals and to bring up the SEs behind you. Direct line to the CRO, Director of Customer Engineering, and product team - no layers. Who this is this for Sales Engineers who've already done the job well and want more than another quota to support. You've owned the technical win on enterprise deals, and you're already the person junior SEs come to after a demo went sideways. If you want a big-company SE org with an enablement team, this isn't it. If you want the hardest deals and the machine that makes everyone else better at them, this is it. What you'll do - Own the technical win on our largest enterprise deals - first technical call through architecture review, security review, PoC, and closed-won - Scope PoCs against the customer's stated success criteria, and hold the scope so evaluations actually finish - Own technical and security responses on RFPs, including SOC 2 and infosec questions from regulated buyers - Ramp new US SEs - their onboarding, their first demos, and the call on when they're ready to go solo - Coach demos and run technical deal reviews. Tell people what didn't land and why - Build the reusable stuff - demo environments, PoC templates, competitive positioning Hiring process - Phone screen interview - 15 minute call with a founder - Recorded demo - We'll give you access to the product. You'll record a short demo of Soda to a hypothetical customer. - Deep dive interview - one deal you won, one you lost, and scoping a PoC from a short scenario - Culture fit with the team What you might not love - Priorities move. Expansion phase, a lot of work, not a lot of process. - No enablement team. If the PoC template doesn't exist, you write it. Requirements Must have - 6+ years as a Sales Engineer, Solutions Engineer, or Solutions Architect at a B2B SaaS company, on enterprise deals - $100K+ ACV, multiple stakeholders, three-month-plus cycles - You've developed other SEs - onboarding, demo coaching, or mentoring. Tell us who you brought up and what you actually did - Fluent in Python and SQL - you can read, write, and debug both in front of a customer - Strong customer communication - clear, calm, and honest under pressure. You can explain something technically complex to a Data Engineer and to a CDO in the same conversation - You give feedback that lands - specific, about the work and not the person. You'd rather have the awkward conversation this week than the same one in three months - Builder mentality, humble, high-horsepower - you write docs without being asked, you'd rather automate a task than repeat it, and you'd rather learn what you're missing than bluff it - Based in the US Nice to have - Experience selling data quality, governance, or observability tools - Experience selling into regulated industries - financial services, pharma, energy, insurance - Data stack fluency - Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, dbt, Airflow, Kafka - Interest in growing into a management track Benefits - Base salary: $160,000-$180,000 - Equity - everyone full-time at Soda is a shareholder - Location: Remote (US-based) - Benefits: PTO, 401k, medical insurance
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