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Looking for inspiration on what to do next. I've worked at AWS as a Senior Solutions Architect for a little over 5 years. First in the US then relocated to central Europe. Been in a team supporting one of our largest enterprise customers (GSA now bdsi) for most of my time here. Not super unhappy, but things are getting a bit boring/stagnant. Always a lot to learn, but on the customer side it is finding yet another way to run containers, day in-day out. I was one of the first SAs hired with more of a sales engineering than pure tech background, so I'm not too interested in the hardcore tech, write blogposts, speak at developer conferences route. Yet my skillset outside of cloud tech, eg sales engineering, presentation skills, public speaking is still not really valued at AWS. (As a colleague said last week: AWS feels a bit like VMware in 2006, the tech sells itself, so there isn't really a need for us per SE.) I've had initial conversations with Salesforce/slack, Microsoft and Google.Would like to work a bit closer to the actual business problems and not just IT like AWS. Also, I really value working in a team. TC: 125k euros salary + 55 RSUs left to vest over the next 18 months. #sales #solutionarchitect #aws
You will enjoy being a customer engineer or principal architect at GCP. We have a sales quota and CEs/PAs with sales engineering background tend to do well here
If willing to stay at AWS have you looked into BD or GTM Specialist type roles? I have done the loop twice for SA and you are correct, they don’t seem to care at all about sales skills. After my last loop I was deemed a strong fit for AWS but recycled into a GTM BD position which would have been a great gig, but chose to stick with my current job. Also could look at smaller companies as well, plenty of up and comers in the Cloud space who would love your AWS experience and give you the opportunity to flex sales skills. I’m an SE Manager at a smaller but established Vendor and in addition to Managing the SE team and being a tech lead, I also have a ton of influence and participate in the entire sales process for the whole region.
+1 to the GTM BD role. Right in the wheel house for someone technical with strong sales skills.
I left SA few weeks back to be a tech lead at an AWS customer
This is unrelated but do you mind speaking to your career journey. I’m looking to break into sales as with experience in automation engineering and a CS background. I’m finding it difficult to get into a SA entry level role so I’m going the SDR route
I think the problem you are facing is typical for most SAs across the board regardless of a company.