Pre Sales Engineer Jobs in Portland, OR (NOW HIRING)

• Own the technical win across the deal cycle: discovery and qualification with AEs, demo, POV design and execution, technical close.

• Run structured POVs with clear success criteria, mutual action plans, timelines, and exit decisions - for deployments from ten nodes to tens of thousands.

• Deliver demos and whiteboard sessions that land with audiences from hands-on network engineers to CISOs and procurement executives.

• Win competitive deals - articulating where ZeroTier beats Tailscale, WireGuard-based stacks, and legacy VPN/SD-WAN vendors, and being honest about where it doesn't.

• Answer RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires, translating FIPS, CNSA 2.0, and post-quantum readiness requirements into concrete architecture answers.

• Architect across our full surface area: hosted Central, self-hosted controllers, flow rules, bridging, multipath, SSO/OIDC, and ZeroTier Quantum's SaaS, sovereign, and air-gapped modes.

• Bridge to Engineering when deals need it - reproduce issues, capture evidence, escalate defects and feature gaps.

• Build the SE machine: demo environments, reference architectures, battle cards, and POV runbooks that make the whole go-to-market team faster.

• Feed the field's voice into the product: structured win/loss insights, deployment patterns, roadmap input.

Pre-sales craft comes first. We can teach ZeroTier internals; we can't teach you how to run a deal.

• 4+ years "customer-facing" in a pre-sales role - Sales Engineer, Solutions Engineer, or Solutions Architect attached to a sales team and a quota. You can point to deals you helped win and explain your role in winning them. 

• Elite discovery skills: you ask the second and third question, uncover the real problem, and disqualify gracefully when there isn't a fit.

• Executive presence and range - equally credible whiteboarding Layer 2 internals with a network architect and presenting risk and ROI to a board-level audience.

• POV/pilot management as a discipline: success criteria, mutual action plans, crisp status communication, on-time execution in parallel.

• Excellent written communication - architecture docs, follow-up summaries, and RFP responses that are clear, polished, and technically precise.

• A builder's mindset for a ~30+-person company: low ego, high ownership, comfortable with ambiguity.

The technical bar (you'll be tested on this, conversationally):

• Strong networking fundamentals: Layer 2 vs. Layer 3 behavior, routing, NAT and NAT traversal, firewalls, DNS, and overlay/underlay separation.

• Comfort at the packet level - Wireshark/tcpdump is a working tool, not a party trick.

• Solid Linux and real cloud experience (AWS/Azure/GCP): VPCs, routing, security groups, hybrid connectivity.

• Hands-on familiarity with at least two of: SD-WAN, ZTNA, VPN technologies (WireGuard, IPsec, OpenVPN), container networking, or embedded/IoT connectivity.

• Working knowledge of SSO/identity (OIDC, SAML, Entra ID/Okta) as it intersects with network access.

• Scripting fluency (Python, Bash) - enough to automate a demo environment and exercise a REST API.

• The ability to translate all of the above into plain-language business value for a non-cryptographer audiences

• Selling into defense, government, or regulated sectors (DOD, GovCloud, sovereign infrastructure).

• Background in OT/industrial environments (Modbus, IEC-61850, SCADA).

• Prior work at an overlay networking, mesh VPN, ZTNA, or SD-WAN vendor.

• Experience as a first or early SE hire - building the function, not just running plays.

• A working grasp of modern cryptography and the quantum threat model - why "harvest now, decrypt later" makes PQC a today problem - and familiarity with the NIST PQC standards (FIPS 203/204/205), hybrid schemes, and the CNSA 2.0 compliance landscape. Most importantly: the ability to translate this into plain-language business value without overselling.

• Familiarity with the NIST post-quantum standards (FIPS 203 / ML-KEM, FIPS 204 / ML-DSA, FIPS 205 / SLH-DSA), hybrid classical + PQC schemes, and crypto-agility as an architectural principle.

• Awareness of the compliance landscape driving adoption: CNSA 2.0 timelines, FIPS 140-3 validation, and PQC mandates emerging across government and regulated industries.

You'll report to the Director of Pre-Sales Engineering & Customer Success and partner daily with Sales, Engineering, and Customer Success. Remote-first with occasional travel for key customer engagements, POV kickoffs, and industry events. We move quickly, write things down, and hold a high bar for what we put in front of customers.

• Competitive salary + variable compensation tied to team success and available equity

• Hybrid office / remote work environment

• Generous employer-paid health insurance, including preventative dental

• 401K with employer matching

• Flexible PTO and flexible work hours

• Career enhancement funds