Sales Engineer GridGain

MariaDB is making a big impact on the world. Whether you’re checking your bank account, buying a coffee, shopping online, making a phone call, listening to music, taking out a loan, or ordering takeout, MariaDB is the backbone of applications used every day. Companies small and large, including 75% of the Fortune 500, run MariaDB, touching the lives of billions of people. With massive reach through Linux distributions, enterprise deployments, and public clouds, MariaDB is uniquely positioned as the leading database for modern application development.

The Opportunity

This position serves a critical role in driving successful deal closure and future growth in EMEA, in close collaboration with sales. Our ideal candidate will have subject matter experience designing and driving consultative solutions to address clients' data and database-centric business challenges in their organisation. He or she needs to possess domain knowledge and maintain flexibility to successfully contribute to the seamless execution of multiple sales cycles. There will also be a heads-down need to organise, create, and lighthouse content individually. You will develop and lead presentations, web conferences, white papers, workflows, and RFP/RFI's. If you have the technical sophistication, proven mastery in a database-centric senior support engineer role, and an appetite for a dynamic role in a startup environment, we'd love to speak with you.

Role Overview

As a Senior Sales Engineer, you will combine deep technical expertise with strong business acumen to drive the technical sales cycle from discovery to close. This role requires a high bias for action, a readiness to roll up your sleeves, and the ability to design sophisticated architectures for distributed, high-performance systems.

Responsibilities

• Technical Sales & Deal Execution
• Cycle Management: Partner with Account Executives and the global sales organisation to support technical sales cycles, prioritise resources, and drive deals to a successful close.
• Go-To-Market (GTM): Actively engage with prospects to assess complex pain points and deliver tailored solutions that align platform capabilities to business use cases.
• Channel Support: Drive technical engagement across channel sales networks, including ISVs, vendors, and consultancies.
• Travel & Region Growth: Travel throughout EMEA as needed to support sales efforts, grow opportunity scope, and engineer tangible customer solutions.
• Solution Architecture & Technical Validation
• Discovery & Architecture: Lead discovery sessions with technical and business stakeholders to design solution architectures across on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and Kubernetes environments.
• Technical Evangelist: Deliver tailored product demos and clearly articulate core concepts such as distributed caching, partitioning, replication, persistence, high availability, and disaster recovery.
• POC Ownership: Plan, manage, and execute complex Proof of Concept (POC) engagements with clearly defined success criteria.
• Optimisation & Evaluation: Support performance testing, troubleshooting, sizing, configuration tuning, and competitive evaluations.
• Technical Documentation: Respond to RFPs, RFIs, security reviews, and architecture reviews.
• Strategy, Enablement & Feedback Loop
• Best Practices: Drive the standardisation and creation of sales engineering best practices, reusable demos, architectural diagrams, and technical content.
• Product Collaboration: Act as the voice of the field by sharing customer feedback with Product and Engineering teams to influence the roadmap.

Qualifications (Required)

• Senior Pre-Sales: Minimum 5 years of hands-on, Senior Sales Engineer experience in enterprise technology.
• Stakeholder Management: Proven ability to navigate and engage confidently with audiences at all levels—from developers, DevOps, and architects to CIOs, CTOs, and CXOs—with a solution-oriented, collaborative mindset.
• Technical & Domain Expertise
• In-Memory & Distributed Tech: Direct experience with in-memory data grids or distributed caching platforms (e.g., Apache Ignite, Redis, Hazelcast, Oracle Coherence, GemFire).
• Distributed Systems: Foundational knowledge of distributed systems, caching, databases, middleware, or data platforms.
• Development & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with an enterprise language (Java, .NET, or Python), web stack technologies, Linux, networking, containers, and Kubernetes.
• Financial Services Knowledge: Strong understanding of Banking & Financial Services disciplines, including payments, risk management, fraud detection, and anti-money laundering (AML).

Logistics & Soft Skills

• Workplace Flexibility: Experience working 100% remotely, with the willingness to travel regionally across EMEA and work off-hours when deals require it.
• Communication: Exceptional presentation, whiteboarding, troubleshooting, and written communication skills, paired with a high level of personal organisation.

Bonus Experience & Skills (Preferred)

• Advanced Ecosystems: Knowledge of SQL, JDBC/ODBC, Spring, Kafka, REST APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures.
• High-Throughput Environments: Background working with low-latency or high-throughput systems.
• Cloud & Delivery Models: Experience in pre-sales for Open Source Software (OSS), SaaS, managed services, or public cloud engineering environments.
• Observability & Security: Familiarity with modern observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Splunk, Datadog) and enterprise security frameworks (TLS, authentication, authorisation).
• Additional Verticals: Vertical industry knowledge in Telecom, Retail, Logistics, or Real-Time Analytics.
• Thought Leadership: A history of public speaking, presenting at tech conferences, or writing technical blogs and articles.

Location

Remote - UK, Spain, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia or Serbia

Travel

Travel is expected to support your work with the sales team & potential customers.

What's in it for you?

Impact the world of technology by pushing the boundaries of technology and business models, working at MariaDB, plc. Be part of a game-changing organisation that encourages outside-the-box thinking, values empowerment, and is truly shaping the future of the software industry. You’ll be collaborating with high-calibre colleagues around the world, offering unparalleled learning and growth opportunities. We provide a very competitive compensation package, 25 days paid annual leave (plus holidays), a massive degree of flexibility and freedom, and more.

How to Apply

If you are interested in this position, please submit your application along with your resume/CV via our ATS Greenhouse. MariaDB does not sponsor work visas or relocation. MariaDB is committed to providing any necessary accommodations for individuals with disabilities within our application and interview process. To request accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter. MariaDB will not accept agency resumes without a prior contractual agreement with HR. Please do not forward resumes to any recruiting alias or employee directly. MariaDB is not responsible for any unsolicited resumes. MariaDB is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.