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Salary: USD 130,738 - 239,680 / annual
Alkira, a Lumen Connect solution, is seeking a Senior Solutions Engineer for Pre-Sales to lead the technical side of enterprise networking deals on the East Coast. You will be the technical lead in Alkira's largest deals, working directly with network architects and infrastructure directors from initial conversation through proof-of-concept to close.
In this pre-sales engineering role, you will partner directly with Account Managers on deal strategy and carry real influence over product development—the Product team treats SE field feedback as a primary input to the roadmap.
Key responsibilities include:
- Present and demo the Alkira platform to technical decision makers, from engineers to CIOs
- Articulate the Alkira value proposition and demonstrate sound understanding of market, industry, and competitive landscape
- Partner with Account Managers to understand customer requirements and pain points; assist with technical asks and RFP/RFI responses
- Scope, run, and win Proof of Concepts end-to-end
- Assist customers with design and deployment based on best practices
- Work with Product Management to provide customer-lens feedback on upcoming features
- Track and drive key customer features and asks with Product Management to implementation
Alkira is building a programmable platform to connect, secure, and operate every cloud, site, partner, data center, and AI workload. Founded by the creators of Viptela and pioneers of SD-WAN, Alkira simplifies how enterprises deploy and manage network infrastructure. As part of Lumen, the platform helps customers move faster without managing hardware, stitching together providers, or operating fragmented cloud networks.
Travel: Approximately 25%, including regional air travel as needed.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years in customer-facing pre-sales engineering roles (Sales Engineer, Systems Engineer, Solutions Consultant, or Solutions Architect), ideally at a networking or security vendor, cloud provider, channel partner, or consultancy
- Strong networking fundamentals (non-negotiable foundation)
- Deep expertise in routing protocols and technologies: BGP, OSPF, static routing, route policy design, route redistribution, filtering, and traffic engineering
- Understanding of network virtualization and software-defined networking: VRFs, multi-tenant architectures, SD-WAN, and encapsulation protocols (GRE, VXLAN, GENEVE)
- Hands-on experience with IPsec VPNs, encryption standards, NAT, and secure connectivity architectures
- Good understanding of enterprise cloud connectivity using Cloud On-Ramps, SD-WAN, and IPsec
- Experience in large-scale enterprise network design and deployment across data center, WAN, and hybrid/multi-cloud environments
- Deep understanding of network services: DNS, DHCP, load balancing, traffic inspection
- Ability to troubleshoot live in front of customers across routing, security, and cloud domains
- Excellent written and verbal communication; comfort presenting and demoing to customers in person
STRONGLY PREFERRED:
- Understanding of cloud networking constructs across AWS, Azure, and GCP (VPCs/VNets, Transit Gateway, Virtual WAN, Cloud Router, peering, Direct Connect, ExpressRoute)
- Network security expertise: firewalls (Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Check Point), firewall policy design, service insertion/chaining, Zero Trust principles
- Relevant technical certifications (CCNP/CCIE, AWS Advanced Networking, Azure Network Engineer, PCNSE)
- Familiarity with Terraform or infrastructure-as-code for network automation
- BA/BS/MS in a technical field
- Strong passion for sales and creating long-lasting professional relationships
