Figuring out your career path as a sales engineer is not a walk in the park. Sometimes it takes a lot of pivoting and perhaps even forging your own to get to a role where you feel the most fulfilled. In this podcast, our guest Owen McClave shares with us his journey from starting out as an individual contributor to becoming a solution architect manager. We dive deep into why and how he took the driver’s seat that led him to pivot throughout his career, some tips for sales engineers during job interviews, and the importance of recognizing and showing your value.

Aside from being the co-founder of Sales Engineers New York, Owen McClave is also a Solutions Architect Manager for AWS. Formerly, he was a Solution Engineering leader at SalesForce, leading teams across the East Coast, from Toronto, Boston, and Washington DC. He is a first-generation American, has always loved technology, and used to do boxing and kickboxing when he was younger.


Key Takeaways
Tune in to our conversation and learn about:

• How Owen started out as a Solution Engineer Leader and then became a Solution Architect Manager
• Why he moved industries from being the king of SaaS to the king of infrastructure
• How he realized civil engineering wasn’t for him and the many jobs he took before realizing his passion building CRM systems for organizations in professional sports and media
• How he convinced the CEO of a company to hire him even if there was no position available for him
• How to overcome objections such as “being too young”, “having no experience” or “not knowing the technology”
• The one mistake SEs often commit during job interviews and what to do instead
• Owen’s opinion on the right time to bring up the “keeping my options open” negotiation tactic
• Why some SEs still get hired even with many gaps
• Taking people off a pedestal
• Confidence in yourself to forge your own path
• When is it time to leave a position and what to do if you’re feeling undervalued
• How he got into his manager role and what he loves about being in leadership

   

Quotes:

On something all SEs need to do during a job interview: “Don’t be afraid to ask questions.”

On being fearless to forge your own career path: “Hearing no from a human being is not dangerous, it doesn’t affect you.”

“Get the doors slammed in your face because what you realize is that, it doesn’t matter. My life is not gonna change, but if I wanted it to change, I had to knock on doors.”

On what he would say to his younger self when he first became a manager: “Do not be so naïve that everybody has your best interests at heart sometimes.”

On how to become a great sales engineer:
“If you can inch your way from last to first, you will dominate in this sport.”



Not so Fire Round

1. What do you love about being a solution engineer?

“I love the art form of the science. You can really invent things that can change people’s lives. I may not be the person who came up with the vaccine, but I wanna be the one who set up the infrastructure that allowed the AI algorithm to come up with the genome sequence to then come up with a vaccine.”

2. What would you change about your role as a solution engineer?
We should have a role in operations and work with better teams internally.

3. Are there any books, tools, resources that you can recommend to sales engineers?
– Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play: Transforming the buyer/seller relationship by Mahan Khalsa
– Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
– Kanban just-in-time at Toyota: Management Begins at the Workplace

4. What separates great sales engineers from the not so great ones?
Lifelong learners, people who hate stagnation, great work ethic, and those who get better every single day.

Connect with Owen McClave on Linkedin: