A Sales Engineer, also known as a Solutions Architect, is a role in software sales that has been on the rise the last 5 years. If you have a technical background and are also good at explaining how to use software to prospects, then it might be the role for you. Before deciding whether you want to be a sales engineer or not, I’m sure you would like to know how much they make in 2023. That’s exactly what this blog has set out to do.

How much money do sales engineers make in 2023?

Let’s dive straight into the salary data. Sales Engineers on average have a base salary of $125,000. Their total compensation or OTE (On Track Earnings )is $175,000. This is definitely a solid living.

If you are one of the top performers at an enterprise software company, you can make $300,00+ a year. That’s close to doctor or lawyer money, which is pretty wild if you ask me.

Now let’s take a look at some of the highest paying sales engineer roles, because you aren’t just going to perform decently, you are going to crush it…right?

Highest Paying Sales Engineer Jobs

Which companies pay their sales engineers the most? Take a look at the image below. You can also view the full sales engineer salary data set here.

Whoa. As seen in the image above, Sales Engineers at Google, Amazon, Atlassian, and more are making bank.

Top performing Sales Engineers at Google can make $792,875 per year. ($215k OTE)

Top performing Sales Engineers at Amazon can make $544,000 per year. ($270k OTE)

Top performing Sales Engineers at Atlassian can make $484,000 per year. ($170k OTE)

Some other names on the list include Dynatrace, Palo Alto Networks, Sophos, and Google Cloud. View list here.

So after looking at the data, it’s safe to say that you can make over $100,000 pretty easily and also have the potential to earn much more if you are at the right company. I might have to switch to sales engineer soon. Seems like a great sales role to be in. The upside is definitely there.

Now that you have decided that you want to be a sales engineer after seeing those juicy salary numbers. What do you do now?

How do you become a sales engineer?

First, you should learn these skills. Then it’s time to look for a job after that!

Ability to work well with others. You will be working with multiple reps and clients so having good soft skills and working well with others is a must.
Basic coding ability or other technical knowledge. Build a basic app, get to know your way around SaaS products
Ability to communicate well. You will be doing a lot of explaining. You need to be able to simplify things down for any prospect to understand.

Prior selling experience will also make you stand out from the pack. Plenty of sales reps make the transition to solutions architect or SE at some point in their careers.

We hope this gives you a little more clarity on how much sales engineers can make and a little about how to become one. Wishing you the best of luck in your career going forward, whether that is as a Sales Engineer or something completely different.