How To Become A Senior Systems Sales Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior systems sales engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Dr. Ariful Azad Ph.D.

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior systems sales engineer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $56.66 an hour? That's $117,846 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 3,400 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a senior systems sales engineer?

Dr. Ariful Azad Ph.D.

Director of Graduate Studies for the Dept. of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Assistant Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington

Look for a job that you would enjoy doing, even if it takes some time to find such a position. Internships are great to explore various options.

ScoreSenior Systems Sales EngineerUS Average

Salary

8.1

Avg. Salary $117,846

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.3

Growth rate 6%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.33%

Asian 6.03%

Black or African American 1.59%

Hispanic or Latino 7.67%

Unknown 6.17%

White 78.20%

Gender

female 5.33%

male 94.67%

Age - 44

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 44

Stress level

7.3

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.5

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.2

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior systems sales engineer

Explore senior systems sales engineer education requirements

Most common senior systems sales engineer degrees

Bachelor's

62.6 %

Associate

18.3 %

Master's

12.2 %

Start to develop specific senior systems sales engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Cloud	18.97%
POC	14.22%
Virtualization	10.00%
Technical Expertise	9.51%
Unix	8.67%

Complete relevant senior systems sales engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior systems sales engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a senior systems sales engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior systems sales engineer resumes.

Research senior systems sales engineer duties and responsibilities

Create tools to manage customer projects, such as standardized proposals, technical templates, and SQL tracking database.
Tie several disparate products together to create a unique SaaS solution that competitively position the company against larger suppliers.
Debug issues with networks, routers, gateways, and hubs, TCP/IP, NIS, NIS+, DNS and DHCP.
Implement GL accounting/administrative functions with retail clients allowing the POS transactions to post and balance the retail software to corporate mainframes.

Get senior systems sales engineer experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a senior systems sales engineer. The most common roles before becoming a senior systems sales engineer include systems engineer, senior systems engineer team lead and senior sales engineer.

Prepare your senior systems sales engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior systems sales engineer resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior systems sales engineer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable senior systems sales engineer resume templates

Build a professional senior systems sales engineer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your senior systems sales engineer resume.

Apply for senior systems sales engineer jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a senior systems sales engineer job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do senior systems sales engineers rate their job?

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Senior systems sales engineer reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Dec 2019

Pros

Requires many aspect to be combine in order to fulfill the job. business and technical knowledge are required in order to be successful pre sales engineer.

Cons

no general certification like PMP exists for pre sales engineer, they are all specified for one product. requires an absurd amount of concentration required for proposals writing if you don't have the adequate tools to help.

A zippia user wrote a review on Oct 2019