Comment by codezero

I should probably date myself, most of this wasn't true 10+ years ago. forward deployed/field, yep, Palantir has kind of owned that. Solutions Architect has definitely been cross functional for a long time, but solutions engineer is a title that I am pretty confident was post-sales first. I A/B tested the title back in 2014 between Product Analyst (candidates too junior), Support Engineer (too much IT/back office support, not enough experience w/ paying customers). Solutions Engineer hit a sweet spot and brought in the best candidates: Generalists who aren't really sure what they want to do, but with broad access to code/product/engineers and customers eventually find a speciality they like.

Because these folks are problem solvers, the title brought a reputation which is exactly why the sales folks wanted to co-opt the title. It conveyed trust and experience. When used well, it's still a good fit in pre-sales for building out POCs and delivering value, but more often than not, it's just sales engineering where they're qualing out potential customers that aren't worth the time of the sales team. Which is fine, except that this is MY title :)

To be clear, I take this a little personally as I was an early adopter of the title. It's kind of like those folks that get annoyed when you're a fan of a band that they liked before you ever heard of them, I admit it.