Anyone ever been a pre-sales engineer or know any? I got asked yesterday if I would be interested in being a VMware Systems Engineer for pre-sales. I said I'd be interested so he passed my info along, no idea if I'll even get called about it.

Just curious if any of y'all have done anything similar and what your experience was.

I do a lot of pre-sales. Whaddya wanna know?

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From what I understand I would be a the technical resource for the sales guy. I've dealt with the guys from a customer stand point and I think I have an idea of the job would be but at the same time I'm not really sure what to expect.

My old director from a job several years ago is in a similar role as this one for EMC and was actually my account rep at this past job. He was asked by the VMware sales guy if he knew of anyone and forwarded my info over.

I just started a new job this past Monday but would definitely be interested in this one if things worked out.

So the way it works for us is, the sales guys (account managers) put in an SA (Solution Architect) request. They're then assigned a pre-sales engineer for whichever technology. Many times, it's simply a short call with a customer to determine what's needed. Then I'll build a BoM and hand it off to the AM. If a customer meeting or presentation is needed, we go on-site and do whatever. Most of it is just learning a business need/requirement and designing a solution that fits. It's pretty cool if you like dealing with customers. You also have to know the products pretty well or the implementation guys have to clean up your mess. I do a lot of implementation as well, so I try to make sure whatever I scope for a project will work.

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Sounds like what I was thinking. Thanks for the info.