The roleAs a Sales Engineer at Valence, you will be the technical voice in our largest deals. You join calls from first meeting through signature, map how Nadia fits into a customer's systems, separate what we already do from what would be custom, and write the scope that delivery teams build from. You know how to tee up the right next technical discussions both externally with customers and internally with engineering. You know when to say "yes," when to say "yes, sequenced," when to push back, and when to find the simpler thing the customer actually needs.
What you'll do- Lead technical discovery with enterprise buyers, HR tech owners, IT and InfoSec.
- Explain Nadia's architecture and how standard enterprise plumbing - SSO, SCIM, HRIS sync, Teams deployment, data residency, encryption keys - maps to the customer's environment.
- Map the customer's architecture, sort requirements into standard connectors vs. configuration vs. custom work, and write the technical scope for the SOW.
- Set realistic timelines with Engineering and route work to the right team: core engineering, forward-deployed engineering, or solutions engineering.
- Run security reviews and questionnaires, and handle CISO and IT conversations with clear, accurate answers.
- Push back well. Be able to take an unconstrained view with clients, pushing a vision, while implicitly understanding the actual constraints that we have in terms of what we can deliver and on what timeline. Sometimes this takes the form of deflecting a client's "We must have X" requirement into something we can actually do.
- Build the reusable assets - reference architectures, security answers, scoping templates - that make the next deal faster.
- Use AI and AI First principles to build tailored demos and quick prototypes that show a customer how Nadia works with their frameworks, data and systems.
- You own mapping client architectures, technical specs for customer integrations, flagging and defining implementation risk for systems we haven't integrated with before, hand-offs to other engineering and FDE teams to deliver.
What you bring- 3+ years in sales engineering, solutions architecture or a customer-facing engineering role at a B2B SaaS company selling to large enterprises.
- Hands-on fluency with enterprise integration patterns: REST and SOAP APIs, SFTP and batch file feeds, webhooks, SSO (SAML/OIDC), SCIM provisioning.
- Comfort with enterprise security and compliance conversations: SOC 2, data retention, encryption and BYOK, single- vs. multi-tenant, cloud networking such as private connectivity.
- Experience scoping work that other engineers delivered, and owning whether the scope was right.
- Clear writing. You can turn a 2-hour discovery call into a one-page architecture and a crisp list of open questions.
- Judgment under pressure: you stay calm and honest when a customer is demanding and a deal is on the line.
- AI fluency. You use AI tools every day, and you can explain how LLM products are prompted, grounded and evaluated, and where they fail.
- A builder's instinct. You know how to use AI tools and coding agents to put together a tailored demo or lightweight prototype yourself, with scripting (Python or JavaScript), APIs or product configuration.
Nice to have- Experience with HRIS and talent systems, especially Workday, or with Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
- Experience helping customers evaluate AI quality, such as building eval sets or success criteria.
- Experience as an early or first SE at a growth-stage company.
What You'll Get- Team Leadership & Scope: Full people leadership of Valence's enterprise deployment organization for your region, direct influence over how Valence's biggest launches are run, and real influence over the best practices Enablement builds into the playbook.
- AI-First Deployment Leadership: Work directly with cutting-edge AI models in production at enterprise scale, and build deep expertise in enterprise AI deployment across some of the world's largest organizations.
- Competitive Compensation & Benefits:
- Competitive salary including base + performance bonus
- Comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision) from day one
- Generous PTO, company-wide R&R shutdowns, and paid parental leave
- Retirement plan support (401k / pensions)
- Meaningful Equity: Ownership in a venture-backed company at a growth inflection point, with top-up grants tied to performance.
- Top-Performing Culture: A team built for top talent: high intensity to win, growth without limits, and a culture that solves hard problems and celebrates big wins together.
Location and Work EnvironmentWe have two seats open for this role: one based in New York, NY and one based in London, UK, each working a minimum of 3 days a week in office. We will consider remote candidates elsewhere in the relevant region for the right background. Candidates must be comfortable working with colleagues across different time zones and hold valid work authorization for their country of hire. Expect regular travel to customer sites for on-site launches and executive business reviews.
