Comment by mrkstu

Sales engineers should be the spirit animals of PMs/SDEs.

They often are having to integrate the company's software with the whole stack of the customer.

They experience the pain of real world setup/optimization/bugs more than anyone else in the company.

They generally are savvy to the challenges of actual software engineering and what is realistic to get done in a given time frame.

They are usually technically articulate enough to frame the challenges in an understandable way for SDEs.

They are driven to improve the customer experience because it also makes their lives better, vs the sales guy looking for ways to just close a sale for commission.

They are very aware of what the competition is coming into bake offs with as far as features and support.

They can let you know what bugs and missing features are costing the company the most money and customer sat.