Building Community of Entrepreneurial Engineers
Intro
No big surprise — the appetite to become an engineer is growing rapidly every year. People are switching from other professions; designers, accountants, and bankers, every day applying to the online coding classes to become engineers. More and more people with extremely diverse backgrounds are bringing something new into our World of Engineering.
The new normal made Engineering even more attractive; work remotely (stay safe at home), meet nice people (over VC), create cool things, and get paid generously — It is a dream job, isn’t it?
From a Solution Engineering Manager standpoint, being an SE (Solutions Engineering) requires you to pursue 3 different skills simultaneously: business, entrepreneurship, and development. If you are mainly interested in development, then maybe SWE is the path for you, if you are interested more in business, then maybe product management, or business development are more up your alley, and if you are more passionate about entrepreneurship, then maybe you should start your own startup.
Finding someone who is interested in all (doesn’t have to be equally interested) is tough and finding content and community on the internet for people who are interested in all the above is also not easy — and this is where we come into the picture.
Overview
I’ve asked my colleagues to share their observations of what it actually means to be a part of Solutions Engineering at Facebook, so we could help you better understand the implications of the role and why we are proud to be not just engineers but entrepreneurial engineers.
Veterans
Solutions Engineering is probably one of the most fun customer-facing, technical roles that exists. It bridges engineering, business development, project management, and about a million other skill sets. As an SE you get to interact closely with CEOs, CTOs, VPs, product managers, architects, and developers alike from some of the top companies around the world. You work in a fast paced startup atmosphere where the work is constantly evolving and immensely impactful. Looking back at my 5 years at Facebook as an SE feels like an eternity because I got to ship so many things here. I’ve had the pleasure of building SDKs, building services, shipping front-end code for programs, creating prototypes, designing programs, leading round tables and speaking at developer conferences which has been super rewarding. And I’m just getting started. If you’re an entrepreneur at heart, this is the role for you! -Zain Aziz
At the end of the day you are a software engineer trying to solve challenging problems as in any other role, but the scope of a Solutions Engineer is much more broad and it is not limited to one specific technology or product stack. In the last 7 years, this role presented me with opportunities to have significant impact in different ways, extending from low level optimizations on HTTP headers to redesigns of machine learning models to process petabytes of data in minutes. This large range of challenges offered a unique chance to develop my skills in different software engineering domains, making it the most exciting aspect of the Solutions Engineer. -Chenca
Straight out of college I had it very clear I wanted to be a software engineer. When I became one, I realized I didn’t like it much. I felt I arrived at the office, put on my headphones and only occasionally talked to other people to understand how the things I was building were used. I loved my brief interactions with a colleague working in technical sales and pitching my company’s products to clients, so I started looking for roles like that. When I realized those had too little technical exposure to my taste, I realized I needed something in between. Solutions Engineering at Facebook was the perfect fit for my ambitions and I’ve been here for almost 7 years. It enabled me to learn about multiple industries such as e-commerce, Travel and Financial Services from a unique perspective. More recently, I started working on the zero-to-one monetization efforts for Messaging products such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct. This is a novel opportunity for Facebook and it keep things even after so many years. -Thiago
Noobs
Be prepared to wear multiple hats: software engineer, product manager, market analyst, data scientist, ML engineer, etc. You will try all of this while making your career at Solutions Engineering. -Vitalii Strokov
Do you thrive in ambiguity? Imagine a role where you could be shipping code to an entire customer base, and the next day meeting with a member of their C-Suite. Solutions Engineering exists to build the right customer solutions by bridging product to customer needs. We’re in the trenches with our clients, from identifying their challenge to enabling them to meet and exceed their goals, all while staying at the very forefront of technology. -Jes Liao
If you find inspiration in solving business problems then Solutions Engineering is the right fit for you. You will work with customers and businesses to understand the problem. And solve these problems by wearing multiple hats: software engineer, product manager, market analyst, data scientist, ML engineer, etc. Get ready to tap into multiple dimensions as a Solution Engineer -Rishi Jariwala
If you enjoy creating solutions to solve the real world problems , shipping your code potentially to billions of users. The Solution Engineering team would be a good place to be your next home. We are looking for experienced, talented software engineers to ensure we consistently deliver a world-class product quality to our users and customers. -Rex Ching
About our Blog
There are many interesting blogs out there that cover technology, entrepreneurship and business. However, there are not a lot that combine all of them into one single entity as Solutions Engineering @ Facebook does. This is why we wanted to create this blog for people who share our passion for solving challenging problems with innovative technology to make a big and meaningful impact.
Every week or so we plan to allow our own SE to share their experience about their work. Whether it is a cool technology we developed, a new project we are working on, or just sharing our own point of view about this role.
We definitely welcome you to join the conversation using the comment section to ask questions, and provide us with relevant feedback and suggestions. However, any comment which is out of the scope of this blog, will not get any response, and might be removed from the blog.
We are always looking for new SE to join our team, so while we will be posting in the blog open positions from time to time, always feel free to check our open vacancies at Facebook career site.
