[Hiring] Principal Sales Engineer @IDC Research Inc.

Role Description

IDC is hiring a Principal Sales Engineer — a true player-coach who will both build the function and personally carry the company's most strategic and technically complex deals. In the early phase of this role, you'll be the hands-on technical anchor for our hardest opportunities while simultaneously standing up the team, playbook, and operating model from scratch.

This is a builder's role: you will hire and onboard the first Sales Engineers, define the demo and technical playbook, and manage the transition from a Product/Engineering-led model of technical support to a scalable, repeatable SE / Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) organization focused on deployment, adoption, and value realization.

As the team grows, you will shift from personally closing deals to coaching regional SEs into independence — but in the meantime, you own the outcome directly.

What You’ll Do

• Hire, onboard, and develop the first Sales Engineers; define the demo/technical playbook, AE engagement model, deal intake process, and team success metrics.
• Personally lead the technical motion on top-50/enterprise deals and any direct-access/MCP integration opportunity during the team's ramp; coach SEs into running these independently over time.
• Serve as the deep technical anchor on IDC Quanta's most complex opportunities — direct-access/MCP integrations, customers' own-environment deployments, and enterprise security/architecture reviews.
• Advise customers on how IDC Quanta operates within their existing AI stack (Claude, Gemini, internal portals, MCP connectors) and within their own environment.
• Build custom demos, reference architectures, and reusable technical patterns that regional SEs can run and scale.
• Allocate SE capacity across AMAS, EMEA, and APAC, ensuring no region or deal type is a single point of failure (avoid cross-training gaps).
• Partner with sales leadership on coverage and forecast, and with Deal Desk and Product on packaging, pricing, and roadmap.
• Define repeatable deployment, integration, security, and governance patterns that regional SEs can reuse, surfacing recurring roadmap gaps to Product.
• Be recognized as IDC Quanta's go-to technical expert, earning trust directly with senior technical buyers.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in SaaS sales engineering/pre-sales, including leadership or player-coach experience; experience standing up or scaling an SE team strongly preferred.
• Credible across both deep technical work and the sales motion — comfortable with APIs, integrations, security, and AI/LLM platforms (MCP a plus).
• Strong track record with enterprise, complex deals; recognized as a go-to technical expert able to earn trust with senior technical buyers.
• Demonstrated ability building process and reusable technical assets from scratch in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.

Benefits

• 15 vacation days (prorated based on start date)
• 12 company-paid holidays
• 6 paid sick days (prorated based on start date; may vary by state)
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 2 floating holidays (prorated based on start date)
• 1 volunteer day
• 401(k) company match (IDC matches 3% on the first 6% of employee contributions)
• Company-paid short-term disability
• Company-paid life insurance
• Company-paid parental leave

Compensation Transparency

At IDC, we are committed to fair and equitable pay practices. Employees are compensated equitably for their work, aligned with their skills and experience. Salary and incentive structures are determined through a rigorous process that considers experience, education, certifications, role-specific requirements, internal equity, and verified U.S. market data from an independent third-party partner.

The expected total annual compensation, depending on location and experience, is between $200,000 - $210,000, inclusive of base salary and variable compensation.

If this role relocates to a different country, the salary range will be updated to reflect that country's range, rather than a currency conversion of the original range.

Equal Opportunity Employer

IDC is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all qualified persons. Employment eligibility verification required. We participate in E-Verify.

IDC is currently able to employ remote workers in the following states: Arizona (AZ), California (CA), Colorado (CO), Connecticut (CT), Washington D.C. (DC), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Kansas (KS), Massachusetts (MA), Maryland (MD), Maine (ME), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), Mississippi (MS), North Carolina (NC), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New York (NY), Ohio (OH), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Virginia (VA), Vermont (VT), Washington (WA), and Wisconsin (WI).