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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Solutions Engineer - **Company:** Scalar Soft, Inc - **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States - **Salary:** $110,000.0 - $140,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Open Source Technology, Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), Openapi, Hubspot - **Published:** September 4, 2026 - **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/founding-account-executive-scalar-9831117 ## About the Role * Experience at a developer-tools, API, or infrastructure company selling to engineering teams * You've been the first AE somewhere, and can tell us honestly what you'd do differently this time * Comfort with technical evaluations - you've run POCs, you know what makes them stall, and you've killed one early rather than let it drift * Fluency with the tooling - HubSpot, Apollo, Clay - and an instinct for automating your own busywork * You've used API documentation in anger and have opinions about which ones are good * You've sold against an incumbent that customers were merely tolerating, and know how differently that deal runs ## Description Our buyers are engineers, and the product is the proof. Zoom's developer documentation runs on Scalar. So does Clerk's - a company whose docs were already a competitive advantage, which makes them exactly the kind of customer with no reason to switch unless the thing is genuinely better. Warp and Profound ship SDKs we generate from their OpenAPI documents, in every language their users ask for. Those are the rooms you'll be in: platform teams, API teams, and the staff engineer who has strong opinions about their spec and is not going to be charmed. They don't want a deck, they don't want a discovery call that's really a qualification interrogation, and they will know within two minutes whether you understand what they build. Which is the thing that makes this an unusual AE job: you cannot win these deals on relationship and process alone. You need enough command of the product and the category to be useful in a technical conversation, know when to bring the Solutions Engineer in, and know what you can promise. Most of these are displacements - teams already on Redocly, Mintlify, Stoplight, ReadMe, or a homegrown docs site that one engineer maintains resentfully. Winning means making the switch feel obviously worth it to the person who has to do the migration. What you'll work on * Closing - owning deals from first call through signature: discovery, the technical evaluation, pricing, security review, procurement, and the close. Sourced by our SDRs, by inbound, by our open-source footprint, and handed over from Marc * The founder handoff - inheriting live pipeline from Marc, deal by deal, without dropping any of it. This is the hardest and most important thing you'll do in your first six months * Working with the Solutions Engineer - you two are a pair. They run the POC, the migration, and the live build against a prospect's API; you run the deal around it. Neither of you should be waiting on the other * Competitive displacement - going up against Redocly, Mintlify, Stoplight, ReadMe, and "we'll just build it ourselves," and building the honest answer to each one. We'd rather lose a deal than win it on a claim that doesn't survive the POC * Enterprise requirements - self-hosting, SSO/SAML, air-gapped deployments, security questionnaires, and the procurement cycle that comes with a real platform buyer * Pricing and packaging - we're still learning what this is worth to whom. You'll be in that conversation with the founders, not on the receiving end of it * Expansion - most of our customers start with one team and one API. Growing that into the rest of the org is a large part of the number * Building the motion - qualification criteria, close plans, forecast discipline, and HubSpot hygiene that makes the pipeline legible to the whole company. Whatever you build is what the next five reps use * Making the SDRs better - you're closest to what actually converts. Feeding that back to the two people writing the outreach is part of the job, not a favor * Product feedback with evidence - you'll hear every objection and every gap first. We expect you to say so loudly, specifically, and early You might be a fit if * You've carried a quota in B2B SaaS for several years and closed deals end to end, including the unglamorous parts - security reviews, procurement, redlines * You've sold a technical product to a technical buyer, and you can hold a real conversation with an engineering leader without reaching for the Solutions Engineer in the first ten minutes * You've worked somewhere without a playbook and built one, or you've been an early rep and know the difference between that and joining a team of thirty * You write well. Short, specific, human - the same standard we hold the SDRs to * You'd rather be honest about a limitation and win the next deal than talk around it and lose the renewal * Sitting next to the CEO while he sells, and then being measured on doing it without him, reads as the appeal of this job rather than the risk * You can hold a forecast you believe in and say the uncomfortable number out loud * You'd rather collaborate to the right answer than win the argument, and you operate with a high level of kindness ## Related Videos - [For the REST of us: API First and Conway’s Law](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1932-for-the-rest-of-us-api-first-and-conway-s-law) - [I’m a Developer Working in Marketing… Here’s Why - Tim Cadenbach](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1372-i-m-a-developer-working-in-marketing-here-s-why-tim-cadenbach) - [Embracing the Hybrid Cloud: Unlocking Success with Open Source Technologies](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/883-embracing-the-hybrid-cloud-unlocking-success-with-open-source-technologies) - [Integrate your Cognitive Assistant with 3rd-party DBs and software](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/249-integrate-your-cognitive-assistant-with-3rd-party-dbs-and-software) - [Contract-First Frontend: Scaling Reliable UIs with OpenAPI and AI](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1995-contract-first-frontend-scaling-reliable-uis-with-openapi-and-ai) - [Developer Marketing](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1049-developer-marketing) ## Related Articles - [Events like RSAC Get You CISOs. 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