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The differences between senior pre-sales engineers and sales 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 senior pre-sales engineer and a sales engineer. Additionally, a senior pre-sales engineer has an average salary of $115,532, which is higher than the $93,727 average annual salary of a sales engineer.
The top three skills for a senior pre-sales engineer include pre sales, technical liaison and sales process. The most important skills for a sales engineer are pre sales, customer service, and sales process.
| Senior Pre-Sales Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $115,532 | $93,727 |
| Hourly rate | $55.54 | $45.06 |
| Growth rate | 6% | 6% |
| Number of jobs | 23,387 | 132,324 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 5 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 75% | Bachelor's Degree, 74% |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 6 |
A senior pre-sales engineer is the technical pillar of sales in an organization. They employ their business acumen and leadership in designing, proposing, demonstrating, and marketing business values to customers. Their responsibilities include delivering technical demos and presentations with a special focus on the consumer's business requirements, converting prospects to customers and customers to product evangelists, building a win-win relationship with customers and internal departments, creating technical architecture designs, assisting sales qualification, and presenting workshops.
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.
Senior pre-sales engineers and sales engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Senior Pre-Sales Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Average salary | $115,532 | $93,727 |
| Salary range | Between $87,000 And $152,000 | Between $66,000 And $132,000 |
| Highest paying City | - | Washington, DC |
| Highest paying state | - | Virginia |
| Best paying company | - | Meta |
| Best paying industry | - | Technology |
There are a few differences between a senior pre-sales engineer and a sales engineer in terms of educational background:
| Senior Pre-Sales Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 75% | Bachelor's Degree, 74% |
| Most common major | Computer Science | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Northwestern University |
Here are the differences between senior pre-sales engineers' and sales engineers' demographics:
| Senior Pre-Sales Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Average age | 44 | 44 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 93.6% Female, 6.4% | Male, 90.1% Female, 9.9% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 1.6% Unknown, 6.2% Hispanic or Latino, 7.9% Asian, 5.8% White, 78.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% | 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% |
| LGBT Percentage | 7% | 7% |