Neara is hiring a Solutions Engineer to help define and grow the Design function within our go-to-market organization. This is a high-impact individual contributor role for someone who has lived the daily reality of utility design work - pole loading, sag-tension, clearance analysis, work order management - and is ready to bring that hard-won expertise to bear on a platform that is fundamentally changing how utilities design, maintain, and harden their networks.
You will sit on the Sales team but operate as a connective tissue across Product, Marketing, and Sales - guiding product direction with the voice of the designer, shaping messaging that resonates with utility practitioners, building sales presentations that hold up under technical scrutiny, and serving as the credible technical SME in customer conversations. Over time, you will become an expert user of Neara, including AutoDesign, and represent that capability externally.
This role is for someone who has done the work, wants to multiply their impact beyond a single project queue, and is energized by the idea of helping define a function rather than slotting into one.
What You Will Do- Develop deep proficiency with the Neara software platform - including AutoDesign - to the point where you can demonstrate, teach, and apply it credibly in front of utility design, engineering, and operations audiences.
- Serve as the technical subject matter expert in customer conversations, discovery calls, demos, and proof-of-value engagements, drawing on your firsthand experience as a utility designer to establish credibility and trust.
- Partner with Sales to craft and deliver technical presentations, demo scripts, and customer-facing materials that translate Neara's capabilities into the language and workflows utility practitioners actually use.
- Partner with Marketing to shape messaging, positioning, and content (one-pagers, technical briefs, case studies, webinars) that lands with designers, estimators, standards engineers, and their leaders.
- Partner with Product to channel the voice of the utility designer into the roadmap - surfacing real workflow friction, validating proposed solutions, and helping prioritize against how the work actually gets done in the field.
- Map Neara's capabilities against incumbent tooling (PLS-CADD, SpidaCalc, OCalc, Pole Foreman) and adjacent platforms (Bentley, AutoCAD, other digital twin providers) to articulate clear, defensible differentiation.
- Build the muscle and the materials - playbooks, technical FAQs, objection handling, competitive teardowns - that will allow the Design function to scale as the team grows.
- Engage directly with utility stakeholders ranging from individual designers to engineering managers to VPs, adapting your communication to the audience without losing technical precision.
Who You Are- 3-5 years of hands-on experience as a Designer, Estimator, or equivalent role producing distribution and/or transmission designs at a utility, EPC, or utility engineering services firm - work that involved pole loading and sag-tension analysis, clearance and NESC compliance, bill-of-materials development, and work order management.
- 3-5 years working at or directly embedded with an electric utility, with a clear understanding of how design work moves through standards, construction, operations, and asset management functions.
- Proficiency in at least one industry design tool - PLS-CADD, SpidaCalc, OCalc, Pole Foreman, or AutoCAD - and a working understanding of the others. Familiarity with utility CAD/GIS environments is expected.
- Aptitude for code. You don't need to be a software engineer, but you should be the kind of person who automates their own work, writes the macro instead of clicking through 400 rows, and is comfortable reading and modifying scripts (Python, VBA, or similar). You are excited to deepen this skill, not intimidated by it.
- Strong communication. You can explain a transverse load calculation to an executive and a business case to a designer, and adjust on the fly.
- Credibility with utility practitioners. You have stood your ground in a design review and can do the same in a customer conversation. PE licensure is not required.
- Curiosity and adaptability. You are energized by ambiguity, eager to learn new software deeply, and motivated by the chance to help shape a function rather than execute someone else's playbook.
- Comfort with cross-functional work. You will be pulled between Sales, Product, and Marketing. You should find that energizing rather than disorienting.
- Experience with digital twin platforms, Neara, or similar physics-based modeling tools is a plus but not required.
- Willingness to travel domestically to customer sites and industry events as needed (estimated 20-30%).
What We Are Offering You- Competitive salary + ESOP.
- Significant career development and growth opportunities, including the chance to help define and ultimately grow a function.
- Highly meritocratic, non-bureaucratic, and low ego work culture.
- The opportunity to work on complex, meaningful products and real-world problems.
- The opportunity to play a direct, critical role in the trajectory of a high-growth company.
- Fully remote within the United States.
