Solutions Engineer

tl;dr: we’re hiring ASAP a talented Solutions Engineer to help us accelerate revenue growth. You will report directly to our co-founder/CEO. The ideal candidate is:

• Semi-technical: no need to code, but you should be fluent in complex business processes and know key concepts of data-intensive software products.
• Persuasive: you’re not a salesperson, but people might mistake you for one. You enjoy talking to prospective customers, explaining our value, and handling objections to win them over.
• Lucid: you distill complex information into simple-to-understand language without losing fidelity. You’re able to pivot your language when talking to non-technical people (e.g. Construction CFOs) and technical people (e.g. our SWEs).
• Curious: no construction experience required, but you should be able to learn industry jargon and answer in-depth questions from construction CFOs within 3 months of starting.

Why are we hiring this role?

• We’re growing like crazy and need to release key bottlenecks to hit our aggressive growth targets over the next year. One key growth constraint is our availability to run technical customer demos and follow-up sales calls.
• Today, we often can’t book follow-up sales calls/demos for a week or more after our intro call because this role is performed “part-time” by two co-founders and one of our TPMs, as an additional side-gig on top of their core duties.
• By hiring a dedicated SE, we will expand our capacity to handle more technical sales calls in a shorter period, thereby signing more customers faster and growing even more aggressively than we are today.
• Having someone dedicated to SE responsibilities (vs. someone doing it alongside other roles) will also improve the quality of our demo calls, technical sales support, sales collateral, product documentation, and other key inputs to sales conversion rates and customer satisfaction

Why join us?

• Early-stage, yet de-risked: we are a rare combo of being early stage (high upside) but lower risk (2XX+ paying customers, $Xm+ recurring revenue, cash-flow positive for over a year, hockey-stick growth). You get the benefits of an early stage startup without the risk you’ll have at almost any other startup. You’ll have a ton of impact, work directly with our customers, and get to work on interesting technical challenges you won’t see at bigger companies. Although we’re early stage, we’ve eliminated key strategic risks you’ll face at other startups. Like an unproven product, lack of market validation, lack of revenue, over-reliance on VC funding, co-founder disputes. We’re all young and hungry. Our team is fully in-person, tenacious, and committed - most of us moved to SF from far away (Canada, SoCal, Texas, Virginia) specifically to build Agave from the ground up.
• Team is technical, diverse, young: you'll work with a formidable founding team that's experienced, intense, and ambitious. We've worked together for 10 years, first at a startup that Amazon acquired, then at Amazon, and now at Agave. You'll learn a ton while having outsized ownership. You’ll have a front-row seat to the good and bad of building a company from the ground up. We’re also technical - all but 1 of our team (our AE!) have either majored in CS, worked as full-time devs, and/or worked in technical roles at startups and larger tech companies for 5+ years before moving into business roles at Agave.
• Huge opportunity without direct competition: startups are incredibly hard, so you want to join one that has a unique advantage. You don’t want to spend years of your life on a company in a saturated market with tons of competition. We’re seizing an opportunity that’s massive (Construction is the world’s third-largest industry) but also overlooked by most people in startup land. Most who can solve this problem aren’t aware it exists or are too distracted by tech trends (blockchain, metaverse, LLMs, etc.) to notice. These talented folks get coaxed into building products that seem cool early on, but don’t solve durable problems or aren’t differentiated enough against their many competitors to be sustainable (e.g. lots of AI products), so they end-up not going anywhere or stagnating without a clear plan to grow profitably. As a result, we have a multi-year head start against potential competitors, increasing our odds of success significantly. We’re also backed by world-class investors (Accel, YC) and Construction insiders (Procore and Autodesk executives, founders of the largest construction tech companies like PlanGrid).

Responsibilities

• You will quickly become a technical subject matter expert on:
  • Our integration platform
  • The various source systems we connect and any changes/updates released
  • Construction and Service-specific business processes
• You will partner with our Sales team to:
  • Lead technical, customer-facing demos to explain our product and clarify our value
  • Address technical questions and explain how we fit into prospects’ business processes
  • Reposition customer objections by proposing creative solutions
  • Help determine fit;provide objective feedback if prospects are compatible with our product
  • Create collateral (e.g. videos, product docs) to explain our product more effectively
  • Maintain and update call scripts for the internal teams to use during demos
  • Continuously improve demos, e.g. reduce prep, add better data, make customization easier
• You will support our Product and Implementation teams during customer onboarding
  • Consult on the transition process adopting our software from their current solutions
  • Configure our platform to align with customer systems and desired workflows
  • Provide technical documentation and assist with post-sales support
  • Assist with customer onboardings to improve our upstream sales processes
  • Influence our product roadmap and onboarding best practices, so we can better scale customer acquisition and revenue activation
• No need to have: prior experience with Construction or at B2B SaaS/dev tools companies

Requirements

• Must have:
  • 2-5 years of experience: in a similar role (SE/Product/Engineering), ideally working with Sales.
  • In-person: pumped to work in-person in SF 5 days per week.
  • Semi-technical: no need to code, but you must have meaningful experience working closely with SaaS products, APIs, SQL, Postman, or similar tools.
  • Fast thinking: ability to think and act proactively to address roadblocks and customer issues.
  • Strong communication skills: able to work well with technical (e.g. SWEs) and non-technical (e.g. Construction CFOs) people. Can run demo meetings, answer technical questions, and communicate clearly over Slack, Zoom, and email.
  • High ownership + conscientiousness: able to manage many threads at once without sacrificing quality.
• Nice to have:
  • Familiarity with business accounting concepts.
  • Familiarity with construction/services businesses.

What’s the difference between our SE and TPM roles?

• While there is overlap in the roles, each role has unique responsibilities.
• Our SE role is more focused on helping Sales close new customers, e.g.
  • leading demo calls and answering technical questions during sales process
  • creating and improving collateral to use in sales process (e.g. call scripts, demo videos)
  • attending and learning from customer onboardings to improve our upstream sales processes
• Our TPM role is more focused on product development and customers after they sign, e.g.
  • researching new source systems and building new API endpoints/workflows
  • developing new features in close collaboration with our SWEs
  • managing and improving our customer onboarding process

Benefits

• Healthcare: we cover 90% of your healthcare costs with several plan options.
• 401k: we match 100% of your contributions, up to 4% of annual salary.
• Relocation: sizable relocation bonus for folks currently located outside of the Bay Area.
• Gym: on-site gym with Peloton, squat rack, Tempo, Yoga setup, and more.
• Visa: we sponsor Visas (H1B, TN, etc.) for candidates who are a good fit!

In-Person

• We've built Agave in-person since day 1, and will maintain an in-person culture in San Francisco going forward. We form tighter bonds, build a stronger culture, and move faster since we're all working from one location.
• Our office is just west of Twin Peaks, 1 block from a bus stop, 10min walk from a BART station, and a 5min drive off the 101 and 280. Our entire team commutes here every day. We believe building in-person is a huge strategic advantage, and we hope you’ll join us.