Sales Engineer

Vercel

Vercel is a cloud platform that helps developers build, deploy, and scale web applications

While sales wasn't my primary focus, I was enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with Vercel in any capacity. The company is renowned for its exceptional engineers and the meticulous attention they give to design and engineering.

I joined as the fifth member of the AMEA sales engineering team. The team would become a mix of folks with sales backgrounds and engineering backgrounds. I would describe my role as leaning into solutions engineering as I would often help teams solve technical issues or guide them in architecting their app for a rewrite to Next.js/Vercel.

One of my key strengths was leading Proof of Concept (PoC) projects. I took charge of defining success metrics and consistently achieved significant results, which were instrumental in closing deals and expanding our client base. My technical expertise and ability to translate complex concepts into tangible benefits for our clients contributed to my receiving the Most Revenue award for Q1 2023, a testament to my effectiveness in bridging the gap between technical solutions and business value.

What did I learn?

As a sales engineer, I got a look into how companies of various sizes structure their teams and approach marketing site and app architecture decisions. To me, it’s really important to grasp a company’s goals, how much engineering time they have, and whether they’re still trying to find the right product fit in order to guide them to the tools they need. Similarly, these factors would also play a big role in shaping how I could best contribute as a designer.

I also got to work every day with an amazing design system, which really opened my eyes to how effective design can make a huge difference in user experience. It taught me the importance of having a consistent and thoughtful design approach.

Perhaps most significantly, I had the opportunity to witness the formation of Vercel's design engineering team. This experience was truly inspiring, as it demonstrated the growing recognition of roles that bridge design and engineering. It sparked my interest in pursuing a position that would allow me to leverage both my design skills and technical knowledge.