Manager, Solutions Engineering - Enterprise

Tailscale is building the new Internet by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices, no matter where they are. From hobbyists to multinational corporations, teams of every size use Tailscale each day to protect their networks, share access to internal tools, and more. We're building a future for the Internet that's easy, sensible, and safe, like it used to be. Founded in 2019 and fully distributed, we're backed by Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital.

Job Description

We are looking for a Manager, Solutions Engineering – Enterprise & Mid-Market to join our rapidly growing team. The Solutions Engineering team partners with customers across the full lifecycle - from pre-sales through post-sales - by helping design, evaluate, and operationalize Tailscale in complex enterprise environments. This role exists to raise the quality of enterprise execution: better discovery, tighter technical evaluations, and clearer articulation of why Tailscale actually matters in a real-world architecture.

The team works closely with Sales, Support, and Product, and collaborates deeply with Engineering and Marketing so customer feedback doesn’t disappear into a backlog. As Manager of Solutions Engineering, you will act as a true player-coach: showing up on important deals, coaching experienced SEs in real moments, and setting a high bar for how enterprise engagements should be run. 

If you care about people leadership, enjoy being close to the technology, and want to stay customer-facing while building a high-performing team of smart, self-sufficient solutions engineers, we should talk.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage and grow a small, senior team by coaching on live deals, developing judgment and technical depth, and hiring people who make the team better - not just bigger.
• Set and uphold a high standard for enterprise discovery, technical evaluations, and successful rollouts that directly impact new customer acquisition and expansion.
• Partner closely with Sales as a credible technical counterpart on complex enterprise opportunities, helping shape deal strategy, architecture, and execution quality.
• Collaborate across Tailscale to improve how we run proofs of concept, explain technical value, and turn real customer feedback into product direction.
• Provide clear, actionable feedback to Product and Engineering grounded in concrete customer use cases and enterprise constraints (not hypotheticals).
• Stay current on cloud, DevOps, networking, and security trends, and help the team continue sharpening both technical instincts and communication skills.

What We Are Looking For

• Experience leading people, ideally as a working manager who still enjoys being in the details
• Experience in a technical, enterprise customer-facing role such as Solutions Engineer, Sales Engineer, or similar
• Clear, confident, opinionated communication skills—you can explain complex systems simply, read the room, and land a point without over-explaining
• Solid understanding of networking and security fundamentals, including cloud environments such as AWS VPCs and Azure virtual networks
• Hands-on technical background with experience in developer tooling, DevOps principles, and modern cloud architectures (CI/CD, infrastructure, APIs)
• Ability to explain Tailscale’s value in your own words, grounded in customer outcomes and technical trade-offs rather than marketing language

This role is not a good fit if you are looking to move away from being technical, prefer managing through frameworks instead of real deal work, default to generic playbooks, or optimize primarily for future scale over present-day impact. We’re looking for judgment, energy, and credibility - not a perfectly adequate manager.

As a company, we strive to maintain fair and equitable compensation practices within our team across all roles and all levels. Tailscale's compensation package includes base salary, equity, and comprehensive benefits. The salary range displayed on each job posting represents the target range for a new hire's base salary. Individual offers may vary based on experience and skill set.