Seeing a lot if partner engineer roles at tech companies. what is this role? looks like there is a little bit less coding/ more traveling? what can you expect in TC compared to SWE?
In some companies this can be a role to work with SI partners like Deloitte, Accenture etc and enabling them on service delivery, pre-sales aspects. These roles may be aligned under the Channels/Alliances organization vs being under Product / Engineering organization.
"Partners" can mean different types of companies for different products.
At Facebook the role is basically an external facing software engineer that works with strategic partners to help the integrate or use Facebook technology. 50% coding. 20% travel. TC is less then SWE. Same base but equity is less.
Partner engineering needs technical and communication skills. Travel is a maybe, it depends on company and team. But the main disadvantage is that partner engineers aren't treated as equal to the development teams and will remain second class citizens at the company. Which also affects the compensation, which is about 20% lower in companies like Google. The work can be interesting and engaging as you have direct influence on what a industry does and while effects on the product can be low, the way the product is used can be influenced.
I largely agree except for the second class citizen bit and about comp. I think it is lower than SWE but not by that much. On the plus side you have direct access to partners and therefore a clearer look outside the ivory tower.
My comp data comes from go/salarycomparison. So I'll stand by it. As for the treatment, I have seen it happen in Android. Requests by them aren't fulfilled and bugs tend to sit for quite some time. Even I am guilty here, but the team's stance is that these bugs can wait. There might be good teams too, but it is very difficult to determine that from outside the company.