What Sales Engineers Are Really Struggling With Right Now

We asked the NAASE community a simple question: “What is the biggest challenge for Sales Engineers right now?”, and offered 4 answer options.

The pie chart above shows how respondents ranked these four pressures. Workload and burnout risk sit far ahead as the top concern, chosen by half of the group. Keeping up with AI and new tech comes next, followed by AE alignment and expectations, while buyer and executive trust appears as a smaller but important slice. In the sections that follow, we look at who is feeling each challenge most and why

Burnout risk hits early and mid-career Sales Engineers the hardest.

Burnout risk is already the dominant threat for working Sales Engineers, especially earlier in their careers. In our poll, half of all respondents picked “Workload and burnout risk” as their single biggest challenge.

The split by total time in the workforce tells a sharper story. Looking at overall career length, not just years in SE roles, Sales Engineers with 1 to 20 years in the workforce, 69 percent chose workload and burnout risk as their top challenge. For those with 21 to 40 total years in the workforce, 37 percent picked it as their top challenge.

So the closer you are to the hands-on front line, the more likely you are to feel at risk. Newer and mid-level SEs juggle intense learning curves, demo pressure, family responsibilities, and constant change, often with less control over territory and deal strategy. More senior SEs still feel the strain, but experience, influence, and role design seem to buffer some of the load. This pattern fits a broader tech picture, where around 73 percent of software developers report experiencing burnout at some point in their careers, according to JetBrains' 2023 State of the Developer Ecosystem as reported by ITPro. For SE leaders, the takeaway is simple. Burning out your early pipeline of talent is not a growth strategy. How are you handling the load at your career stage?

AE alignment pressure peaks in small companies and leadership roles

AE alignment is not a niche complaint. In our poll, 21 percent of all respondents named “AE alignment and expectations” as their biggest challenge. The tension is not spread evenly though. It spikes in two places that many SEs will recognize right away.

At companies with 500 employees or fewer, 41 percent of respondents chose AE alignment as their top issue, compared with only 6 percent in larger organizations. Smaller firms often run fast on informal processes. AEs and SEs share targets but do not always share a clear playbook, ownership model, or meeting rhythm. That leaves SEs dependent on individual AE styles rather than a consistent system for discovery, demos, and follow-through, a pain point NAASE members mention often.

Seniority tells a similar story. Only 13 percent of non-managers picked AE alignment as their top concern. Among manager-level and above, that number jumps to 42 percent. Leaders sit where misalignment becomes visible in lost deals, messy handoffs, and burned-out SEs pulled into last-minute “save the deal” efforts.

External research backs up the cost of misalignment. SiriusDecisions found that companies with well-aligned commercial teams grow revenue and profit significantly faster than those with poorly aligned teams.

For SE leaders especially, this chart is a mirror. Where does AE alignment break down most often for your team?

Keeping up with AI is primarily a big-company problem for sales engineers.

In our poll, 24 percent of respondents selected “Keeping up with AI and new tech” as their biggest challenge. The split by company size shows where that pressure sits. Among SEs at organizations with 501 or more employees, 33 percent chose AI as their top issue, compared with only 6 percent in companies with 500 or fewer employees. Bigger companies tend to run more AI projects and place more expectations on SE teams.

Industry adds an important twist. Every respondent who picked AI as their top challenge works for a tech or IT company, while none of the SEs in construction or manufacturing did so. It is a small “well, duh” moment that also acts as a sanity check for data quality. The people who live closest to AI products and roadmaps are exactly the ones saying it is their hardest problem.

Globally, employers expect around 40 percent of workers to need reskilling of six months or less as technologies such as AI change how work gets done, according to the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report. For Sales Engineers in large tech firms, that reskilling story is already here in ambitious AI roadmaps, shifting win stories, and customers who are excited and confused.

Conclusion

Taken together, these findings show a role that is stretched on several fronts. Burnout risk is highest among early and mid-career Sales Engineers. AE alignment issues spike in smaller companies and at leadership levels. Keeping up with AI is mainly a problem for SEs inside large tech organizations. These are not random complaints; they are structural pressures built into how many teams are running presales work today.

The question now is what leaders choose to do with this information. Some responses are straightforward. Right-size territories and project loads. Give AEs and SEs a shared playbook and clear ownership. Carve out real time and budget for AI learning, not just one-off demos. Just as important, connect SEs to a wider professional community so they do not have to solve these problems alone.

That is the space NAASE aims to fill through membership, the Certified Sales Engineer credential, and ongoing peer conversations about how to make this work more sustainable and more rewarding.

Methodology: NAASE conducted a LinkedIn poll from November 7 to 17, 2025. It received 38 responses, of which 3 were excluded (two respondents were not in sales engineering roles, and one was retired), leaving 35 for analysis. Respondents’ public LinkedIn profiles were reviewed and anonymized for analysis. “Manager+” roles include managers, senior managers, directors, and C-level positions. Industry and company size classifications were based on each respondent’s current LinkedIn company profile; the “Manufacturing & Construction” category also included other non-tech industries. Years in the workforce were calculated as 2025 minus the year the individual’s first listed job began, regardless of whether that job was in a sales engineering role. Participants were a self-selected group from NAASE’s LinkedIn network, reflecting sales engineers active on the platform.