Job description

ABOUT TRAVERSAL Traversal traversal.com is the AI Site Reliability Engineer (AI SRE) for the enterprise. Production complexity was already outpacing what engineering teams could manage manually, and AI-generated code is accelerating that gap. Traversal is built for that challenge, autonomously understanding and reasoning across even the largest, most complex production environments to diagnose, fix, and prevent incidents. Our mission is to free engineers from endless firefighting and give them more time to focus on creative, high-impact work. Today, Traversal operates in mission-critical environments at some of the world’s largest enterprises. Our roots remain deeply embedded in AI research, and we’ve brought together researchers from institutions including MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Columbia, and Cornell with world-class technical staff and operators from companies like Google, Meta, Datadog, ServiceNow, and Citadel Securities to take on one of the hardest problems for AI to solve. Traversal is backed by Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Hanabi, NFDG, and American Express Ventures. THE ROLE As a Solutions Engineer at Traversal, you’ll help define how we engage with prospective customers, you'll guide them from initial technical discovery through successful deployment. This is a foundational, customer-facing role at the intersection of technical depth and relationship building. You’ll collaborate with product and engineering to translate customer needs into compelling, customized pilot deployments that achieve high value for customers. You’ll work closely with our CEO, CTO, GTM and Product teams to help scale founder-led sales into a repeatable process. You’ll act as the technical voice in conversations with prospects, create resources to support go-to-market efforts, and relay insights back to the team to shape roadmap priorities. If you thrive in high-ownership, high-velocity environments—and are excited to help define how AI-native infrastructure products are introduced and adopted—we’d love to meet you. RESPONSIBILITIES - Drive technical discovery and demo conversations with engineering teams evaluating Traversal. - Translate complex infrastructure problems into tailored, high-impact pilot evaluations. - Build and maintain demo environments, technical guides, and internal tooling to support our sales process. - Partner with product and engineering to scope integrations, relay customer feedback, and influence roadmap direction. - Support onboarding and implementation efforts for new customers, ensuring early wins and long-term adoption. - Stay current on observability trends, SRE workflows, and the broader AI infrastructure ecosystem. REQUIREMENTS - 3+ years in a Solutions Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or Solutions Architect role, and/or relevant engineering experience with strong customer instincts. - Strong technical background in backend systems, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or observability platforms. - Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to a range of audiences. - Experience building POCs, leading demos, or owning technical parts of a sales cycle. - Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with shifting priorities. - Project management: able to coordinate across multiple internal/external stakeholders, lead recurring meetings, and drive pilots to completion. - Proven enterprise experience navigating complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles (POV/POC, Security/Legal/Procurement) from discovery through production NICE TO HAVE - Familiarity with SRE workflows or observability tools. - Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code tools like Terraform or deployment systems like Kubernetes. - Proven ability to create technical enablement content and scale early sales motions. - Interest in AI infrastructure and the future of agentic systems. COMPENSATION We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and additional benefits. The U.S. base salary range for this full-time role in San Francisco is $150,000–$300,000 OTE, plus equity and benefits. Our salary ranges are based on location, level, and role. Individual compensation is determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge. WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN US Traversal is a place to take on hard, meaningful problems with real ownership from day one. You’ll work alongside people who challenge you to grow, learn constantly, and help define a new category of infrastructure software. We think long term, move quickly, and hold a high bar without taking ourselves too seriously. We offer competitive salary and equity packages, health insurance, fertility benefits, a great tech setup stipend and flexible time off. Plus in-office snacks, team happy hours and outings, an annual company offsite, and plenty of built in time to collaborate across teams.

Requirements

Must-haves

If you thrive in high-ownership, high-velocity environments—and are excited to help define how AI-native infrastructure products are introduced and adopted—we’d love to meet you.
Drive technical discovery and demo conversations with engineering teams evaluating Traversal.
Translate complex infrastructure problems into tailored, high-impact pilot evaluations.
Build and maintain demo environments, technical guides, and internal tooling to support our sales process.
Partner with product and engineering to scope integrations, relay customer feedback, and influence roadmap direction.
Support onboarding and implementation efforts for new customers, ensuring early wins and long-term adoption.
Stay current on observability trends, SRE workflows, and the broader AI infrastructure ecosystem.
3+ years in a Solutions Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, or Solutions Architect role, and/or relevant engineering experience with strong customer instincts.
Strong technical background in backend systems, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, or observability platforms.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to a range of audiences.
Experience building POCs, leading demos, or owning technical parts of a sales cycle.
Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup environment with shifting priorities.
Project management: able to coordinate across multiple internal/external stakeholders, lead recurring meetings, and drive pilots to completion.
Proven enterprise experience navigating complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles (POV/POC, Security/Legal/Procurement) from discovery through production

Nice-to-haves

Familiarity with SRE workflows or observability tools.
Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code tools like Terraform or deployment systems like Kubernetes.
Proven ability to create technical enablement content and scale early sales motions.
Interest in AI infrastructure and the future of agentic systems.

Application prep

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Keywords to mirror

aigokubernetes

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick

Benefits

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Health Insurance