Associate Sales Engineer

Description

Podium Automation is reimagining industrial control panel manufacturing through software-enabled design and automated fabrication. We're building technology to create a new industrial supply chain - reducing lead times for critical electrical equipment from months to days. We've raised over $23M from top-tier investors including Construct Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Transition Ventures, Sunflower Capital, Banter Capital, and SV Angel.

We're hiring an Associate Sales Engineer to join our commercial team and grow into a technical anchor of our sales motion. You'll support the technical side of customer conversations — helping translate electrical specifications, single-line diagrams, and project requirements into accurate quotes and clear proposals. This is a high-impact, high-growth role at the intersection of engineering and commercial teams, with direct mentorship from our sales and engineering leads and a clear path to Sales Engineer as you build expertise.

You'll work closely with our sales, engineering, and operations teams to support discovery calls, help develop quotes, and move opportunities from first contact through handoff to production. As one of the first members of our commercial team, you'll help build (and shape) the playbooks, tooling, and processes that scale with us.

Responsibilities

• Join and support first calls with prospective customers to understand their control panel needs, project timelines, and technical requirements
• Review customer-provided documentation (single-line diagrams, BOMs, specifications, RFQs) and translate it into standard inputs that drive our quoting process, with guidance from senior team members on non-standard cases
• Partner with our engineering team to scope standard builds, escalating complex or non-standard requirements appropriately
• Support the quote-to-close technical workflow — follow-ups, clarifications, and revisions
• Help build and refine internal software tooling and processes that make our quoting motion faster and more accurate
• Serve as a technical point of contact between customers and our internal design and manufacturing teams
• Contribute customer insights back to product and engineering to inform our roadmap

Requirements

• There are 4 values that all Podium employees are expected to demonstrate (albeit imperfectly):
• Win for the customer. We sit on the same side of the table as our customers - their wins are our wins. We’re building the vendor we always wished we had.
• Default to transparency. We believe in honesty, transparency, and kindness. It’s about how you get things done and not just what gets done.
• Speed is a feature. We move fast and take ownership. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
• Win and lose as a team. Individuals drive inputs, teams drive outputs. We celebrate success together but aren’t afraid to fail and iterate. We own outcomes together and don’t deflect blame.
• 0–2 years in a sales engineering, applications engineering, technical pre-sales, or adjacent technical role — new grads with relevant coursework or internships welcome
• Foundational knowledge of industrial control panels, motor controls, PLCs, VFDs, or related electrical equipment, and the willingness to develop deep expertise fast. You can read (or are quickly learning to read) a single-line diagram
• Strong written and verbal communication — comfortable asking clarifying questions and explaining ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Customer-obsessed mindset and eagerness to build trust with technical buyers
• Highly organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable in a fast-paced, ambiguous startup environment
• Degree or coursework in electrical engineering, mechatronics, or a related technical discipline
• Internship or project experience in industrial end markets (data centers, utilities, manufacturing, energy, water/wastewater)
• Exposure to UL 508A standards