ABOUT / RAMP
How I'd ramp as a Backblaze SE
A plain 30/60/90 for a new Solutions Engineer. These are generic themes, written from how this guide came together. Nothing here is from inside Backblaze.
Learn it with my hands
- Stand up B2 from scratch: buckets, scoped application keys, Object Lock, lifecycle rules, event notifications, CORS.
- Run the backup ISVs customers already own (Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, rclone, MSP360) against B2, end to end, including a restore.
- Learn the pricing and the Overdrive and B2 Neo stories well enough to whiteboard them without slides.
- Shadow AE calls; learn the deal desk, the CRM hygiene and how support escalations work.
Win the first deals with the AEs
- Own technical discovery on live opportunities and write the success criteria before any POC starts.
- Run first POCs with a clear plan: scope, test cases, timeline, exit criteria.
- Handle security reviews and questionnaires; build a reusable answer bank.
- Bring field feedback to product with concrete customer evidence.
Make it repeatable
- Codify a demo and POC playbook: scripts, sample data, scorecards, "first 30 minutes" demos per use case.
- Publish reference architectures and battlecard updates from real deals.
- Help onboard the next SEs: a ramp checklist, recorded demos, office hours.
- Measure it: POC win rate, time to technical win, reuse of the playbook.
Built by Fred Nix. Unofficial; not affiliated with Backblaze, Inc.