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The differences between sales engineers and solutions engineers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 4-6 years to become both a sales engineer and a solutions engineer. Additionally, a solutions engineer has an average salary of $95,482, which is higher than the $93,727 average annual salary of a sales engineer.
The top three skills for a sales engineer include pre sales, customer service and sales process. The most important skills for a solutions engineer are cloud, pre sales, and java.
| Sales Engineer | Solutions Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $93,727 | $95,482 |
| Hourly rate | $45.06 | $45.90 |
| Growth rate | 6% | 6% |
| Number of jobs | 132,324 | 123,287 |
| Job satisfaction | 5 | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 74% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 6 |
A sales engineer is responsible for assisting customers with their technical equipment and advanced scientific product needs. Sales engineers must have excellent knowledge of the scientific processes and component functions of the products they're selling to deliver presentations and orient the customers. Sales engineers' duties also include troubleshooting, identifying product defects, and upgrading systems for better optimization. They are also responsible for analyzing cost estimates documents, performing adjustments as needed, process payments, arranging deliveries, and settling customers' complaints by replacing damaged items or doing refunds.
A solutions engineer is an individual who assists customers in identifying their computer software needs and generates customized business software solutions for them. Solutions engineers collaborate with other department engineers to create practical demonstrations of proposed solutions and showcase them to the other members of the team. They are required to test the installed software and fix programming bugs that create errors with the system. Solutions engineers also maintain customer relations by providing post-installation follow-ups.
Sales engineers and solutions engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Sales Engineer | Solutions Engineer | |
| Average salary | $93,727 | $95,482 |
| Salary range | Between $66,000 And $132,000 | Between $68,000 And $134,000 |
| Highest paying City | Washington, DC | San Francisco, CA |
| Highest paying state | Virginia | California |
| Best paying company | Meta | ByteDance |
| Best paying industry | Technology | Start-up |
There are a few differences between a sales engineer and a solutions engineer in terms of educational background:
| Sales Engineer | Solutions Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 74% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Most common major | Business | Computer Science |
| Most common college | Northwestern University | Stanford University |
Here are the differences between sales engineers' and solutions engineers' demographics:
| Sales Engineer | Solutions Engineer | |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 90.1% Female, 9.9% | Male, 85.1% Female, 14.9% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 1.7% Unknown, 6.2% Hispanic or Latino, 8.0% Asian, 7.1% White, 76.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% | Black or African American, 1.4% Unknown, 6.1% Hispanic or Latino, 6.9% Asian, 10.8% White, 74.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% |
| LGBT Percentage | 7% | 7% |