When it feels like AI and agents have disrupted every part of the sales cycle, you can’t help but wonder how an SE’s hard-won skills – distilling really complicated concepts into elegant demos, handling objections gracefully, adapting their talk tracks to specific industries, verticals, and company sizes – will need to evolve.

And the Bureau of Labor Statistics still feels like there’s room to grow, at a pace that’s “faster than average.”

While it’s impossible to predict the future, talking to people closest to the role can get you pretty close. Below, we sum up conversations with two leaders in the SE field, Muskan Jindal and Matt Finch, about:

• How solutions engineering is changing
• What SE work is staying the same
• Where SEs should focus their attention now

1. Using AI to Qualify Faster

The best SEs love to tinker, so it’s no surprise many SE teams have already adopted AI.

Matt sees them doing it in a “crawl-walk-run sort of way,” starting with the tasks that take the most time. Things like demo creation, RFP research, and writing RFP responses.

But the bigger opportunity for SEs, in his view, is to figure out how AI can deliver an excellent demo experience much earlier in the sales process.

“There will always be a place for the in-person demo that’s highly customized, ultra specific to the discovery you’ve done,” he says.

“But putting the tool forward earlier in the process qualifies opportunities quicker. Plus, buyers are so enabled by AI that it’s probably costing you deals to make them go through two, three, four disco calls.”

Demo automation is making this easier. “I used to record Loom videos, but I don’t do that anymore,” says MJ.

“Demo automation tools like Navattic do a great job of showing the most important 3-4 things about your product in the most concise way possible,” she shares.

The efficiency works both ways.

Agentic demos can ask qualifying questions about company size, use cases, current tech stack, and priorities on behalf of SEs, and clue them into the features prospects care most about so they can customize live demos accordingly.

At the same time, the prospect can immediately decide whether exploring the product more is worth their time and reaches out for a deeper dive. “This pattern is only going to increase.”

Read more of her tips for running discovery with AI: The SE’s Practical Playbook.

2. Addressing the Build vs. Buy Objection More Often

“So, convince me. Why wouldn’t my engineering team just make this in-house?” is something every SE has heard before.

It’s just that, now, it’s one of the first things every buyer asks.

“With AI, it’s much easier to figure out what a prototype might look like. You can vibe code an app in a day,” says Matt.

In these situations, SEs have to double down on the attributes that are much harder to build and maintain without a larger engineering team. Matt points out:

“What you can’t necessarily build yourself, or at least without substantial engineering resources, is software that scales and meets security requirements.”

Beyond that, Matt notes, there’s:

• The physical cost. Of development, yes, but also hosting. Not to mention, changes in ownership. “What happens if the person who built it leaves the company?”
• The opportunity cost. “What else could you be building with that time? That money?”

If you’re selling an AI tool (or at least one with AI features), MJ encourages SEs to reframe their pitch from “buy this tool to help you do xyz” to “make the myriad tools you already have work harmoniously.”

“At this point, any company that you speak to has a global rollout of Claude. They are probably using Cursor, they have something like Glean,” she emphasizes.

“The value now is, ‘Ok, I see you already have a ton of different tools, and I can tell it’s not working. Here’s how my tool gives your other tools the context they need to actually work.’”

3. Trying on Other Titles

Every couple of years, people change the name of the SE role. Forward deployed engineer, FDE, is the latest iteration.

Matt thinks this version is a reflection of increased buyer maturity. People are way more enabled than they ever have been to try out new technology, implement things, vibe code.

“So when it comes to a buying experience, it’s not enough to do a great demo and hope that someone spends seven figures on your software,” he explains.

“There’s more of a demand to bring your product to life, whether that’s a lab-type environment or deploying real use cases into production, and that’s where you need professional services – where ‘FDE’ is coming from.”

For some SEs, this more technical, consultative approach is exciting. Others are using the people skills they already have to pivot out.

Per MJ, “I was speaking to my mentor the other day, and we both noticed that more presales-focused SEs are starting to gravitate toward AE roles.”

Before, being an AE might’ve only been for folks who cut their teeth as BDRs or wanted to pivot into sales post-business school. Now, MJ sees companies being more receptive to reps coming from other functions.

“Everyone is moving up the ladder in a fast and systematic way without education and support.

Everything is DIY,” says MJ.

What AI hasn’t touched is the parts of the SE job that were never really about the demo:

1. Excellent Storytelling

“I think an SE’s job has always been to provide great knowledge and become a trusted advisor to customers. And I don’t think AI will ever take that away,” Matt highlights.

Deeply understanding a customer and crafting a story about how your tool aligns perfectly with their company goals are still fundamental SE skills.

“Ultimately, people buy from people. If you’re making a six- or seven-figure investment, your job’s on the line if you pick the wrong vendor,” Matt says.

“You want to know you’re making the right choice and be able to explain it to someone else.”

2. Detailed Discovery

MJ doesn’t see discovery going anywhere either. “I don’t see it changing in the next ten-plus years,” she says.

If anything, it’s becoming more central, and more of a shared responsibility.

As some SEs move into AE roles, disco is turning into less of a handoff and more of a joint effort, happening earlier and going deeper than before.

“I see new tools that just enable you to do better discovery, or enable the customer to be more open to a broader discovery.”

3. Building Trust

While some buyers are really bullish on AI, some really aren’t. Especially the ones in older industries, like banking or insurance.

“These are hundred-year-old businesses with decades-old stacks. With these kinds of customers, it’s your job to be a myth buster,” MJ explains.

“You’ll need good answers for questions like, ‘Will AI look at my accounting and routing number and send money anonymously?’ ‘What if your agents send spam to customers?’”

There’s another layer to this that affects modern companies, too: hallucination.

“When it’s so easy to craft a picture-perfect demo, people start to question how a product will behave in real life. It’s your job to convince them,” she says.

Leaning Into Their Creativity

With AI at their disposal, SEs should spend less time on manual grunt work and more time thinking about the best way to get their product out there.

For example, MJ’s been thinking about how to use AI and agents to do things like:

• Break into a new industry. Instead of building a GTM playbook and a working demo for every new vertical or region, she’s using agents to pull from a wealth of existing product docs and then refining them herself. “The blackboarding part is very enjoyable for SEs, and AI can automate the research.”
• Get recognized as a new category. As old as these institutions are, people still trust Gartner and Forrester. She’s thinking about using agentic demos to stand out. “If you can use an agent to build a demo that shows just how unique and new your product is, the higher the probability of you getting featured, right?”
• Enhance partnerships. MJ suspects that by giving partners access to agent-led demos, she could take some of the enablement and presales work off their plate. When SEs and AEs get on the phone with a prospect, that person will already have gotten a partner’s seal of approval and have a greater understanding of what the product does.

Honing People Skills

With AI taking the busywork off of SEs’ plates, Matt’s seeing the top folks in the field reinvest that time in the skills bots can’t replicate.

“What I’m finding is that SEs are starting to capitalize on AI to bring more of their soft skills out,” he says.

“So maybe that’s role-playing, maybe that’s finding new storytelling frameworks, helping them actually rehearse and practice and get better at the human side.”

The AI-driven, repeatable style demos are an excellent way to gather information about a prospect. And SEs are the experts at using that data to create a highly personalized demo experience.

Been thinking about freeing up your SEs for more complex deals? See how Navattic agents can help.