The Ideal Candidate
The Senior Sales Engineer is a curious, consultative advisor who pairs with sales to win net‑new ARR and expand existing accounts. You connect Entersekt’s capabilities to the customer’s business outcomes: surfacing the real problem behind the stated request, then mapping it to higher approval rates, lower fraud losses, improved regulatory compliance, or an enhanced customer experience. You sell what we can deliver, and you set the delivery team up to succeed. You operate independently, handle most customer queries without escalation, and make the customer’s voice heard internally with tenacity.
This is not a product‑led demo role. We sell on value, not features.
The Role
You partner with Sales as the trusted technical advisor on qualified opportunities across our payments and authentication suites. Sales qualifies the commercial fit before you engage; from that point you own the technical evaluation: discovery with the customer’s technical stakeholders, articulation of fit, technical objection handling, workshop delivery, POC scoping where required, and a clean handover to Solution Delivery at contract signature. Inside the existing customer base, you support upsell and cross‑sell where new ARR is in play.
Customers are predominantly issuers, merchants and acquirers, and payment networks. The work is technical, the buyers are sophisticated, and the regulatory context (SCA, GDPR, card network rules and EMV 3DS specifications) is non‑negotiable. Deep expertise in one of payments or authentication is required, with working fluency across both.
Responsibilities
- Engage qualified opportunities as the technical lead, partnering with Account Executives to win net‑new ARR and surface expansion opportunities in the existing book.
- Run discovery with technical and business stakeholders to understand pain points, current architecture, and commercial drivers; translate these into use cases and a credible Entersekt solution narrative.
- Articulate Entersekt’s differentiators in language the customer can use internally to build their own business case. Not in product‑marketing terms.
- Address technical objections directly, including comparative positioning against incumbent vendors and in‑house alternatives.
- Lead technical workshops, demos and POC scoping with customer and partner technical teams.
- Lead the technical sections of RFP/RFI responses in partnership with Sales.
- Contribute to solution design alongside Solution Architecture, with clear scope boundaries: SE shapes the win, SA owns the build.
- Deliver clean handovers to Solution Delivery at contract signature so the delivery team can execute without re‑discovery.
- Escalate product gaps, integration blockers and competitive intelligence to Product, Engineering and Sales leadership. Follow up until resolved; customer voice does not wait.
- Build the product, domain and integration knowledge to handle most customer queries independently, reserve internal SME engagement for genuinely novel or high‑risk exposures.
- Produce technical content that accelerates pipeline: customer‑specific briefings, integration guidance, comparative positioning material.
Skills and Experience
- 7+ years in a customer‑facing pre‑sales, solutions engineering or technical consulting role, ideally within a SaaS environment specialising in payments or authentication.
- Deep technical expertise in one of:
- payments (EMV 3DS, 3DSS or ACS operations, issuer/acquirer integrations, transaction flows, authorisation rate optimisation) or
- authentication (Strong Customer Authentication, out‑of‑band MFA, mobile and web SDK integration, trusted device endpoints, orchestrated authentication journeys).
- Working fluency in the other domain: sufficient to support an opportunity end‑to‑end without handing off.
- Track record of carrying technical credibility into commercial conversations with both technical and executive audiences.
- Comfortable operating in regulated environments.
- Financial services experience is strongly preferred.
- Engineering, Computer Science or related technical degree, or equivalent practical experience.
- Travel: typically, 25‑30%.
Personality Attributes
- Curious: You ask the next question and the one after that. You assume the stated requirement is rarely the real requirement.
- Tenacious: When the customer’s question needs an internal answer that isn’t forthcoming, you elevate, follow up, and hold colleagues to their commitments.
- Self‑sufficient: You build knowledge actively. You can carry most customer conversations alone, and you know the boundary at which to bring in Product or Engineering.
- Consultative: You sell value, not features. You can sit on the customer’s side of the table without losing Entersekt’s commercial position.
- Comfortable in ambiguity: Fast‑moving fintech, evolving products, evolving regulation, demanding customers. You find a path without needing one mapped for you.
- Strong communicator: Whiteboard, slides, prose, code; whichever medium the customer needs.
Equal Opportunity Employer
We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workforce that reflects the global communities we serve. For all South Africa‑based roles, preference will be given to candidates from historically disadvantaged groups, in accordance with local Employment Equity objectives.
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