Solutions Engineer

Summary

Blacksmith is a company that builds infrastructure for running CI workloads efficiently, helping clients optimize their CI processes. The Solutions Engineer role involves partnering with sales, acting as a technical advisor, solving customer challenges, and influencing product direction to ensure customer success.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery, scoping sessions, and qualification calls with engineering, DevOps, and platform teams
• Deliver high-impact product demos, whiteboard sessions, and tailored technical deep dives
• Design and execute POCs, including benchmarking CI performance, optimizing pipeline architecture, and validating ROI models
• Build credibility with architects, engineering managers, SREs, and CTO-level stakeholders
• Translate engineering pain into clear solution designs using Blacksmith’s CI cloud
• Guide customers on best practices for CI modernization, ephemeral compute, cost optimization, and migration off hyperscalers
• Assist customers in debugging CI performance bottlenecks, runner reliability issues, or pipeline misconfigurations
• Help teams optimize GitHub Actions at scale and adopt ephemeral runners effectively
• Maintain deep technical understanding of Blacksmith’s architecture and how it integrates into complex enterprise environments
• Capture customer feedback and use cases, advocating for features and improvements that accelerate adoption
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product to validate requirements, shape roadmap decisions, and improve usability for large-scale CI teams
• Participate in strategic account planning with AEs, CSMs, and leadership
• Identify technical expansion opportunities within existing customers
• Ensure smooth handoff from evaluation to onboarding, working closely with post-sales teams

Skills

• Experience in solutions engineering, field engineering, pre-sales, DevOps, or consulting
• Hands-on understanding of modern CI/CD tooling (GitHub Actions preferred), pipelines, and DevOps workflows
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerization, or ephemeral compute systems
• Ability to read logs, diagnose failures, and reason about CI performance bottlenecks
• Ability to present confidently to engineering ICs, architects, and CTOs
• Skilled at simplifying complex concepts and tying technical value to business impact
• Ability to anticipate needs, remove friction, and help customers realize the full value of Blacksmith
• Comfortable in a high-velocity, evolving technical and GTM environment
• Experience with DevOps tooling, infrastructure automation, or ephemeral compute systems
• Understanding of CI benchmarking, cloud cost analysis, or hyperscaler limitations
• Experience supporting enterprise evaluations at scale (security reviews, architecture sessions, procurement support)
• Familiarity with Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, or observability tools
• Deep curiosity about engineering productivity and developer experience

Qualifications

Must Haves

• Experience in solutions engineering, field engineering, pre-sales, DevOps, or consulting
• Hands-on understanding of modern CI/CD tooling (GitHub Actions preferred), pipelines, and DevOps workflows
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerization, or ephemeral compute systems
• Ability to read logs, diagnose failures, and reason about CI performance bottlenecks
• Ability to present confidently to engineering ICs, architects, and CTOs
• Skilled at simplifying complex concepts and tying technical value to business impact
• Ability to anticipate needs, remove friction, and help customers realize the full value of Blacksmith
• Comfortable in a high-velocity, evolving technical and GTM environment

Nice to Haves

• Experience with DevOps tooling, infrastructure automation, or ephemeral compute systems
• Understanding of CI benchmarking, cloud cost analysis, or hyperscaler limitations
• Experience supporting enterprise evaluations at scale (security reviews, architecture sessions, procurement support)
• Familiarity with Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, or observability tools
• Deep curiosity about engineering productivity and developer experience

Benefits

• Competitive salary + meaningful equity
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401K match
• Unlimited PTO
• Early-exercise stock options
• 12 weeks fully paid parental leave (U.S.)
• Annual offsite.