Principal Solutions Engineer, West

Cresta unlocks the true potential of the customer experience, turning every conversation into a competitive advantage. Cresta’s unified AI platform combines conversational AI agents, real-time human agent augmentation, and comprehensive conversation intelligence to drive revenue and efficiency gains across every channel. The world’s leading companies, including United Airlines, Cox Communications, and Marriott, use Cresta to power world-class customer experiences every day.

Born from the Stanford AI Lab, Cresta has raised more than $270 million from the world’s leading investors, including a16z, Greylock, and Sequoia. Cresta’s leadership includes some of the leading minds in AI today. Our CEO, Ping Wu, founded and led Google's Contact Center AI and Vertex AI platforms before joining Cresta to build the future of AI-driven customer experiences.

Over the next few years, AI is going to redefine how people all over the world interact with businesses every day. Come build that future at Cresta.

About the role:

As a Principal Solutions Engineer, you’ll be at the forefront of the AI transformation in customer experience. Partnering with Sales Directors, you’ll serve as both a business consultant and technical expert—guiding prospective customers through the discovery, design, and validation of Cresta’s AI-powered solutions.

You’ll connect deeply with customer stakeholders to understand their business goals, technical environments, and operational challenges, and architect intelligent solutions that combine the power of LLMs, SLMs, and real-time AI assistance. Your ability to translate both technical complexity and business impact will be critical to driving successful sales cycles and long-term customer outcomes. Location: West Coast, US Remote.

Responsibilities:

• Act as a consultative partner to customers—uncovering business objectives, technical environments, and operational challenges to map them to AI-driven solutions.
• Act as a consultative advisor to prospective customers, uncovering operational workflows and strategic goals to design solutions leveraging Cresta’s real-time AI capabilities, including virtual agents, agent assist, and conversation intelligence.
• Lead technical discovery sessions to understand customer systems, including contact center infrastructure, telephony and IVR architecture, and CRM/workforce management platforms.
• Qualify and translate customer requirements into robust, scalable Cresta configurations, ensuring tight alignment with business value and technical feasibility.
• Design and deliver compelling, tailored product demonstrations that highlight how Cresta’s AI-powered virtual agents, real-time coaching, and analytics can deliver measurable business outcomes.
• Own the technical design and delivery of proof-of-value (POV) engagements, including integrations, real-time coaching workflows, and virtual agent use cases.
• Run ROI workshops and build business case models that connect Cresta’s capabilities to quantifiable customer impact (e.g., cost reduction, efficiency, CSAT).
• Provide insights based on your experience with AI technologies, contact center transformation, and customer success strategies.
• Serve as a technical liaison between Sales, Product, and Engineering—providing feedback on platform capabilities, customer needs, and market trends in AI, NLP, and contact center transformation.
• Stay current on emerging technologies, including LLMs, SLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), speech recognition, and contact center AI platforms.
• Deliver persuasive, tailored product demonstrations that showcase how Cresta’s AI—built on a proprietary architecture using large and small language models—drives measurable ROI through automation, efficiency, and improved customer outcomes.

Qualifications We Value:

• 7+ years of experience in customer-facing roles, including 1–3 years in pre-sales, solutions engineering, or consulting within the enterprise software or contact center industry.
• Deep knowledge of contact center solutions, including telephony architecture (SIP, SBCs, ACDs, IVRs) and CCaaS platforms (e.g., Genesys, NICE, Five9, Amazon Connect).
• Strong understanding of AI/ML technologies, especially large language models (LLMs), small language models (SLMs), and how they are applied in conversational AI and agent augmentation.
• Experience with real-time systems, CRM tools (e.g., Salesforce), analytics platforms, and SaaS solution architecture.
• Ability to design and communicate complex solutions clearly to both technical and business audiences.
• Consultative mindset with a proven track record of leading strategic conversations, influencing stakeholders, and tailoring solutions to business goals.
• Fast learner and self-starter who thrives in high-growth, high-collaboration environments.
• Enthusiastic about Cresta’s mission and motivated to help customers unlock value from AI.
• You embody our core Operating Principles

Perks & Benefits:

We offer a comprehensive and people-first benefits package to support you at work and in life:

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with plans to fit you and your family
• Flexible PTO to take the time you need, when you need it
• Paid parental leave for all new parents welcoming a new child
• Retirement savings plan to help you plan for the future
• Remote work setup budget to help you create a productive home office
• Monthly wellness and communication stipend to keep you connected and balanced
• In-office meal program and commuter benefits provided for onsite employees

Compensation at Cresta

Cresta’s approach to compensation is simple: recognize impact, reward excellence, and invest in our people. We offer competitive, location-based pay that reflects the market and what each individual brings to the table.

The posted base salary range represents what we expect to pay for this role in a given location. Final offers are shaped by factors like experience, skills, education, and geography. In addition to base pay, total compensation includes equity and a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family.

This role is variable target compensation eligible. There is potential to exceed target earnings when goals are surpassed.

OTE Range: $220,000-$275,000 - variable & Offers Equity

Our use of AI in recruiting: We may use AI tools in our recruiting process, which require human review and oversight. If you have questions about our use of AI or wish to opt out, please contact recruiting@cresta.ai (if you are opting out, please use the subject ‘Opt-Out’ in your email).

Recording & AI transcription: We do not authorize candidates to record or use AI transcription of any interview by phone, notetaker app, AI glasses, or other device. Candidates may request an exception or accommodation for review during the interview process as needed.

Recruiting impersonation scams: We have noticed a rise in recruiting impersonations across the industry, where scammers attempt to access candidates' personal and financial information through fake interviews and offers. All Cresta recruiting email communications will always come from the @cresta.ai domain. Any outreach claiming to be from Cresta via other sources should be ignored.