Senior Sales Engineer - Custom Automation & Machine Building

Job Description

Job Description

Who We Are 

DEVELOP LLC is an engineering company that designs and builds custom machines and robotic integrations for manufacturers across the country. We are a FANUC Authorized Systems Integrator and an A3 Certified Robot Integrator based in Verona, Wisconsin, and we are building a company that compounds year over year. 

We are going to own the machine building market in North America. Not by being everywhere. By being the best, and by picking our clients as carefully as they pick us. 

Our buyers are mid-sized and large manufacturers, growth-minded companies solving real capacity, quality, and labor problems. Machine builds run $500K to $5M, and the relationships trend toward multi-million-dollar annual accounts. Deals like that take time to close. We prove value early, earn trust, and capture the long-term work where high margin and high value meet. Everyone here plays the long game. 

Who This Role Is For 

You are an engineer who moved into sales and kept the engineering, or a technical seller who earned the engineering the hard way, on plant floors and in design reviews. You have spent five or more years selling engineered products, custom equipment, or automation, and you are good at it. You are probably employed and successful right now. 

And you are probably capped. Maybe your comp has a ceiling no amount of closing breaks through. Maybe you keep getting pulled into project management because your company understaffs engineering. Maybe you are selling someone else's catalog when what you love is scoping something that has never been built. 

Uncapped margin-based commission. Engineers staffed behind every deal you close, so you sell and they build. And the product is custom machine design and build, which means every deal starts with a blank sheet and your understanding of the customer's floor. If you have spent your career around these buyers, your network transfers on day one. 

You work alongside the founder. You open and develop the accounts, he will help close the largest builds and strategic expansions with you. 

Why This Seat Exists 

We have more deals in the pipeline than the existing team can manage. Leads arrive marketing qualified through our BANT+S process – budget, authority, need, timeline, and synergy screened before they reach you. The pipeline is full and getting fuller. What we need is the person who owns it. 

You are stepping into a functioning machine, not an empty room.

What You Do 

Hit the Road 

• Take marketing qualified meetings and turn them into relationships 

• Represent DEVELOP at 3 to 8 trade shows annually 

• Travel to client facilities. Walk their lines. See their problems where they live. Expect 20-40% of your time on the road. 

Listen and Educate 

• Hear what a manufacturer is actually trying to solve, not just what they say they need. Ask the question underneath the question. 

• Always find the big why. Growth, capacity, quality, labor. The real driver shapes everything downstream. 

• Lead our roadmap and assessment engagements end to end. You sell them, you run the discovery on site, and you present the findings, with our engineers behind the technical depth. 

Lay It Out 

• Walk a plant floor and hold the layout in your head. Equipment, flow, space, constraints. 

• Turn what you saw into a rough 2D concept on a whiteboard or a napkin, right there in the meeting. Cell arrangement, footprint, material flow. 

• Your concepts are the starting point, not the design. Our engineers take it from there. But the client sees you understood their floor before you left it. 

• On paid assessments, your layout work is part of the deliverable. This is billable engineering judgment, not sales theater. 

Qualify and Protect the Pipeline 

• Run deeper qualification on every lead using BANT+S and score honestly 

• Know a real opportunity from a tire-kicker within one conversation 

• Protect the engineering team's time by filtering out misaligned projects 

• Maintain HubSpot so every deal has an owner, stage, and next action at all times 

Close 

• Your primary close is a paid scoping engagement, or a scoped machine when it is similar to machines we have already built 

• Engineers do the technical depth. You get them in the room with the right client. 

• Pass large complex builds and strategic expansions to the founder. Own everything else. 

• Build a book of accounts that grows year over year, where the customer calls you first 

How Success Works Here 

Our sales cycle runs 6 months to 3+ years, and we measure the role accordingly, on the relationships you build and the pipeline behind them. There is no revenue expectation while you ramp. Post ramp, this seat carries a $10M+ annual book of business.

Three Things Are Non-Negotiable 

• Manufacturing credibility. Five or more years in or around manufacturing – on the floor, in the shop, in the process. You know how things get made and you respect the people who make them. This cannot be trained and we will not bend on it. 

• You listen more than you talk. Not as a technique. As an instinct. 

• You are a closer. You ask for the business without flinching, handle a no without folding, and move a deal forward when a nicer person would let it drift. 

Preferred: 

• Technical sales experience in automation, industrial equipment, or engineered products – integrator, distributor, or component supplier side 

• Familiarity with FANUC robotics, machine automation, or controls systems 

• Engineering degree, or a design or manufacturing engineering role earlier in your career 

• CAD background (SolidWorks, Inventor, AutoCAD). Nice to have, not required. The sketch is required. 

• HubSpot or similar CRM experience 

How You Get Paid 

Base salary: $100,000 to $130,000, depending on experience. You earn on top of base two ways: 

• Margin-based commission on the machine builds you close. The rate scales with the margin the job achieves. Uncapped. 

• Fixed fees on the scoping and Extension of Team engagements you close 

The commission structure is built as a real path to double your base. We walk through the full structure in the first conversation. 

Why Verona, In Person 

Sales and engineering are not two departments here. We are a single unit, and this seat is the hinge. Your concepts go from whiteboard to the engineers building them, in the same building. You give shop tours. You sit in design reviews on deals you sold. That does not work remote, and we are not pretending it does. 

At 20-40% travel, in person means you work out of our Verona shop the 2 to 3 days a week you are not on the road, not five days behind a desk. 

This Is Not for You If 

• You talk more than you listen 

• You need a fast close to feel like you are doing your job 

• You will oversell a client to make a number 

• You think manufacturing is a stepping stone to something better 

• You need a large company structure to operate 

• You are looking for a remote role or a lifestyle job 

• You want to sell from behind a desk 

• You are not genuinely curious about how things get built 

The Details 

• Location: Verona, Wisconsin. In person, plus client travel and trade shows. 

• Reports to: President 

• Base salary: $100,000 to $130,000, depending on experience 

• Commission: Margin-based, uncapped 

• Profit sharing: 10% of company profit (excluding one-time capacity reservation fees) shared across the entire team 

• 401(k): 3.5% company match 

• Health insurance: 100% of employee health premium company paid. Vision, dental, elective, and dependent coverage employee paid. 

• Travel: All business travel company paid. Personal vehicle reimbursed at the IRS standard mileage rate; vehicle allowance reviewed as road miles build. 

• Sales cycle: 6 months to 3+ years. Patience is a requirement, not a preference. 

To apply : include a cover letter. Resumes are limited to three pages with a cover letter, two pages without. 

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