Field Senior Solutions Engineer - Database

About This Role

At SolarWinds, we're a people-first company. Our purpose is to enrich the lives of the people we serve—including our employees, customers, shareholders, partners, and communities. Join us in our mission to help customers accelerate business transformation with simple, powerful, and secure solutions.

The ideal candidate thrives in an innovative, fast-paced environment and is collaborative, accountable, ready, and empathetic. We're looking for individuals who believe they can accomplish more as a team and create lasting growth for themselves and others. We hire based on attitude, competency, and commitment. Solarians are ready to advance our world-class solutions in a fast-paced environment and accept the challenge to lead with purpose. If you're looking to build your career with an exceptional team, you've come to the right place. Join SolarWinds and grow with us!

Role Overview

The Senior Field Database Solutions Engineer is an independent, customer-centric problem-solver and storyteller who owns the pre-sales technical strategy for all database opportunities across EMEA. As a key member of the Sales team, you will combine deep database expertise with consultative selling skills to understand customer challenges, design tailored database monitoring and performance solutions, and articulate business value that compels customers to choose SolarWinds.

This is a field-based role with a strong on-site customer presence, requiring regular travel across the region to engage with enterprise customers, channel partners, and key accounts. You will operate with high autonomy, serve as a trusted technical advisor for all database-related engagements, and play a critical role in driving revenue growth across the EMEA Database business.

Key Responsibilities

• Pre-Sales Ownership: Own the end-to-end SE strategy for database-focused customer engagements across EMEA, including meeting agenda design, story arc, technical approach, and follow-through.
• Product Demonstrations & Webinars: Conduct compelling online and on-site demonstrations of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA), SQL Sentry, Database Observability(DBO), and related database solutions, tailoring messaging to the customer's specific database challenges and environment.
• Technical Discovery & Solution Design: Lead deep discovery sessions with customers to understand their database landscape, performance pain points, and operational goals. Assess the customer's current database infrastructure and recommend solutions that improve performance, scalability, and operational efficiency, defining project scope, success criteria, and timelines.
• Value Articulation: Clearly articulate the value proposition of SolarWinds database solutions in the context of the customer's unique requirements, using consultative and value-based selling techniques. Translate technical database metrics into business outcomes that resonate with both technical and executive stakeholders.
• Technical Advisory: Advise Inside and Outside Sales in all technical pre-sales functions related to database monitoring and management, providing expert guidance to Account Executives and Channel Partners on the optimal database solutions to address customer requirements.
• Complex POC Execution: Design and execute complex Proof of Concept (POC) and Proof of Value (POV) engagements across multi-database environments (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and others), including cloud and hybrid scenarios. Anticipate and mitigate technical and organisational risk throughout the evaluation process.
• Product Configuration & Troubleshooting: Perform advanced pre-sales technical support duties, including DPA/DBO/SQL Sentry configuration, agent deployment, environment setup, and troubleshooting of customer issues during evaluations.
• Customer & Product Feedback: Convey structured customer feedback, including feature requests, competitive intelligence, and product issues, to Product Management and Development teams. Help shape internal best practices based on field experience with database customers.
• Continuous Learning & Enablement: Maintain and continually upgrade deep technical understanding of the SolarWinds database product portfolio and broader database technologies. Provide training, mentoring, and knowledge transfer to other team members, and deliver Sales/Partner enablement sessions as required.
• Events & Field Presence: Present at partner events, trade shows, and industry conferences. Travel to partner sites for training and enablement. Maintain a strong on-site presence with key database customers across the EMEA region.

Required Skills & Experience

• 5+ years of experience in a technical pre-sales, solutions engineering, database administration, solutions architecture, or technology consulting role (or equivalent combination of education and experience).
• 5+ years in a dedicated pre-sales or solutions engineering capacity, ideally within a software vendor or systems integrator environment, with a strong focus on database technologies.
• Deep database expertise across one or more of the following: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Cassandra), and/or IBM DB2.
• Solid understanding of database performance monitoring, query tuning, indexing strategies, wait-type analysis, and capacity planning.
• A strong blend of technical ability, sales acumen, and exceptional customer interaction skill, comfortable leading executive-level conversations and deep technical database workshops alike.
• Fluent English speaker with exceptional oral and written communication and presentation skills. The ability to distil complex database performance topics into clear, compelling narratives is critical. Additional languages are a plus.
• Proven experience with cloud-based database services including AWS RDS, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Google Cloud SQL, and Aurora. Understanding of hybrid cloud database architectures is highly desirable.
• Strong reasoning, analytical, and technical troubleshooting skills with the ability to navigate complex customer database environments.
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant Business, Computing, or Engineering discipline or equivalent professional experience.

Desirable Qualifications:

• Relevant industry certifications or accreditations (e.g., Microsoft Certified: Azure Database Administrator Associate, Oracle Certified Professional, AWS Certified Database – Specialty, MCSA/MCSE, or SolarWinds SCP certifications). We value continuous professional development and would love to see evidence of your commitment to learning.
• Experience with database DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines for database changes, and Database Reliability Engineering (DBRE) methodologies.
• Familiarity with value-based selling methodologies (e.g., MEDDIC, Challenger, Solution Selling).
• Experience responding to RFI/RFP/RFx processes.
• Understanding of the competitive landscape in the database performance monitoring space.

SolarWinds is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. SolarWinds will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

All applications are treated in accordance with the SolarWinds Privacy Notice: https://www.solarwinds.com/applicant-privacy-notice