VP of Solutions Engineering

Team: Solutions Engineering

Location: [NYC] - Hybrid

Reports to: CRO or CEO

About Lightning AI

Lightning AI is building the platform and infrastructure that make it dramatically easier for teams to develop, train, deploy, and scale AI systems. As the company behind PyTorch Lightning, and following our merger with Voltage Park, we bring together developer-first AI tooling with high-performance compute infrastructure for researchers, startups, and enterprises building at the frontier of AI.

We operate with a simple set of values: Move Fast, Focus, Balance, Craftsmanship, and Minimal. We care about people who can operate with urgency, solve hard problems directly, and build with high standards without creating unnecessary complexity.

About the Role

We are looking for a VP of Solutions Engineering to build and lead the technical field organization that helps Lightning AI win, onboard, and expand strategic customers. This is a senior leadership role for someone who can combine technical depth, enterprise selling discipline, customer empathy, and operating rigor. You will define how Lightning AI proves value in the field, how our technical teams partner with Revenue, and how customer patterns translate into better product and GTM execution.

What You'll Do

•   Build, lead, and scale the Solutions Engineering organization across enterprise, strategic, channel, and technical specialist motions.
•   Own the technical sales strategy for complex enterprise opportunities, including discovery, demo strategy, architecture, POC methodology, technical validation, and executive alignment.
•   Partner with Sales leadership to improve win rates, deal velocity, qualification quality, forecast confidence, and technical differentiation.
•   Develop a repeatable field engineering playbook for AI infrastructure, ML workflows, platform adoption, technical evaluations, security reviews, and enterprise buying committees.
•   Recruit and develop exceptional MLSEs, Solutions Engineers, technical leaders, and field specialists.
•   Create clear standards for demos, POCs, technical discovery, architecture reviews, customer handoffs, and product feedback loops.
•   Represent Lightning AI with executive and technical customer stakeholders, including CTOs, VP Engineering, Heads of AI, ML platform leaders, research leaders, and infrastructure leaders.
•   Partner deeply with Product and Engineering to surface field patterns, influence roadmap priorities, and close gaps that block enterprise adoption.
•   Work with Partnerships, Customer Success, Marketing, and Revenue Enablement to build consistent technical messaging and scalable field assets.
•   Establish the metrics, inspection points, and operating cadence for a world-class technical pre-sales organization.

What We're Looking For

•   12+ years in solutions engineering, sales engineering, field engineering, technical pre-sales, ML infrastructure, or related technical leadership roles.
•   5+ years building and leading high-performing technical field teams in enterprise technology markets.
•   Deep understanding of complex technical selling, enterprise evaluation cycles, POCs, executive alignment, and cross-functional deal execution.
•   Credibility with technical buyers and the ability to simplify AI, infrastructure, platform, and architecture concepts for senior business stakeholders.
•   Experience partnering closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Partnerships, Marketing, and Revenue Operations.
•   Strong talent judgment and a track record of hiring, coaching, and developing technical field leaders.
•   A high-accountability operating style with strong forecasting discipline, field inspection, and customer follow-through.
•   Comfort leading in a fast-moving startup where the market, product, and GTM motion are evolving quickly.

Nice-to-Haves

•   Experience in AI infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, MLOps, data platforms, GPUs, or high-performance compute.
•   Experience building a solutions engineering organization through rapid growth or category creation.
•   Hands-on technical background in software engineering, ML engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure, or data systems.
•   Experience supporting both direct enterprise sales and partner/channel technical motions.

Why Lightning AI

•   You will help define how companies build and scale real AI systems, not just sell another generic software product.
•   You will work with technical customers and teammates who care about speed, clarity, craft, and direct problem-solving.
•   You will join a company with developer credibility, infrastructure ambition, and a GTM motion that is still early enough to shape.