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Salary: USD 129,891 - 216,482 / annual
Alkira, a Lumen Connect solution, is seeking a Senior Solutions Engineer for Pre-Sales to lead the technical side of enterprise deals across 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. You'll present and demo the Alkira platform to technical decision makers ranging from engineers to CIOs, clearly articulate the value proposition, and demonstrate deep understanding of the market, industry, and competitive landscape.
Key responsibilities include: partnering with Account Managers to understand customer requirements and pain points; assisting with technical asks and RFP/RFI responses; scoping, running, and winning proofs-of-concept end-to-end; assisting customers with design and deployment based on best practices; providing feedback to Product Management on upcoming features from the customer lens; and tracking key customer features and asks through to implementation.
The role is remote but requires approximately 25% travel, including regional air travel. Candidates must reside on the East Coast, USA.
Alkira is building the future of enterprise networking with one 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 the SD-WAN market, Alkira was built to radically simplify 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.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 8+ years in customer-facing pre-sales engineering role (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 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
