Sales Engineer Playbook · SDR → Sales Engineer
"They still think of me as the SDR."
This usually isn't a capability problem — it's a visibility problem. The people who'd need to see you differently have never had a reason to.
Why this happens
Your day-to-day work as an SDR is genuinely not technical, so there's no natural moment for anyone to update their impression of you. Perception lags reality until something forces it to catch up.
Why the obvious fix doesn't work
Announcing it — telling people you're "more technical than they think" — reads as self-promotion and rarely lands. Reputation isn't argued into existence; it's demonstrated.
What actually changes it
Small, repeated, useful technical contributions that other people actually see: answering a hard question in a team channel, writing a short explainer, helping with a demo. Reputation is built from evidence, not claims.
Today's 10-minute version
Find one technical question your team has been asking informally. Research the real answer and share it somewhere visible — a channel, a doc, a standup.
The skills underneath this