Technical Sales recruitment
The buyer is usually an engineer, so technical sales needs people who can hold a real technical conversation, not just manage a relationship. The consultant on your search screens for that first.
What this desk covers
Four disciplines sit at the commercial edge of an engineering business. Account managers retain and grow existing client relationships. Business development wins new ones. FAEs bridge the two, technically credible enough to support a client's design-in, commercially aware enough to help close it. Product managers own the roadmap and requirements that decide what the other three have to sell. All four need real technical fluency, not a generalist B2B sales background with "interest in tech" bolted on, because the buyer is usually an engineer.
Account Management
Technical account managers who can hold a genuine engineering conversation, not just manage the relationship.
Business Development
Business development professionals selling technical products and services into engineering and technology businesses.
Applications Engineering (FAE)
Field applications engineers who bridge deep technical product knowledge with the sales process.
Product Management
Technical product managers who own the roadmap for hardware and embedded products and can hold their own with both engineering and the customer.
Typical seniority
Working level
Building credibility in a product area and a customer base.
Established
Owns a territory, a set of accounts or a design-in process.
Senior
Key Account Manager and senior business development titles, and FAEs with deep product ownership.
Most searches sit between working level and Key Account Manager, the senior end of the account management ladder, plus equivalent senior business development titles. FAE hires skew toward real product depth rather than seniority, because the role runs on technical credibility that takes time to build whatever the title. There is less executive volume here than on Engineering & Technical. The harder searches are about technical credibility, not seniority.
Industries
These roles sell into the technology and engineering businesses the rest of the site covers: component and semiconductor suppliers, defence and aerospace primes, industrial and telecoms equipment manufacturers. A candidate's credibility usually depends on having sold into, or come from, one of those sectors. Defence and aerospace cycles involve more stakeholders and a longer technical evaluation than commercial telecoms or industrial sales, which changes what a strong business development candidate looks like.
What makes this hard to hire for
The hard part is finding people who are strong on both sides: technical enough to survive a real evaluation with a client's engineers, commercial enough to close it. Most lean one way. A strong engineer who has moved into sales still over-explains. A strong salesperson cannot hold the technical conversation past the first meeting. A generalist search overweights the commercial CV and misses that gap until a client meeting exposes it. Cycles here are also longer and more technical than a typical B2B sale, which a candidate's numbers alone will not show.
How we approach it
We assess candidates against a real technical conversation, not just a sales record, because that is the part a CV hides most easily. For FAE and applications roles we look for evidence of running a design-in largely unsupervised, not attending meetings beside a more senior engineer. For account management and business development, retention and renewal figures, or evidence of closing a technical, multi-stakeholder sale, tell us more than headline new-business numbers. Most searches on this desk run as permanent hires.
Technical Sales hiring: frequently asked questions
Hiring across Technical Sales?
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