Sales Engineers

Sell business goods or services, the selling of which requires a technical background equivalent to a baccalaureate degree in engineering.

The occupation of "Sales Engineers" has an automation risk of 44.2%, which is only slightly below the base risk for comparable professions (45.0%). This moderate risk stems from the hybrid nature of the role, which combines technical expertise with interpersonal and persuasive abilities. Many of the core responsibilities involve following established processes and generating documentation—areas where automation technologies, especially natural language processing and document-generation tools, have made significant advances. For example, tasks such as developing, presenting, or responding to proposals tailored to specific customer requirements, collaborating with sales teams to understand needs and promote products, and creating sales or service contracts are increasingly automatable. Modern AI tools can generate proposal drafts, analyze customer requirements, and even handle routine contract creation, driving up the automation risk for these aspects of the job. However, not all elements of the Sales Engineer role are equally susceptible to automation. The tasks most resistant to automation typically require deeper critical thinking, judgement, and nuanced communication. These include reporting to supervisors about prospective firms' credit ratings, writing technical documentation for products, and diagnosing problems with installed equipment. Such responsibilities often require context-driven analysis, synthesis of complex technical information, and direct interaction with both technology and clients, making them challenging for current AI or robotic systems to replicate. This human element helps anchor the occupation's automation risk below the base rate, as these less automatable duties remain core to the profession. Finally, the potential for automation in this field is also influenced by bottleneck skills such as originality, where the risk of automation is quite low—only 3.4% and 3.8% for key tasks requiring this competency. Originality is crucial when Sales Engineers need to devise creative solutions for unique customer challenges or when preparing technical documents and proposals that stand out from competitors. Tasks demanding original thought and problem-solving are much less vulnerable to automation, as AI still struggles with generating genuinely novel and contextually appropriate ideas. As long as these bottleneck skills are integral to the occupation, they will serve as a substantial safeguard against further automation, ensuring that the human touch remains valuable in the role.