> Wanted to work with tech from a more overarching level
> I get a huge sense of accomplishment seeing customers user our product’
> Interface between business and tech
You might like trying your hand in Professional Services either at a System Integrator like Deloitte or first-party in a product company (now often re-labelled as ‘forward deployed engineers’).
Their main problem space is getting customers to successfully use the product through marrying your understanding of the tech’s limitations and sweet spots with the customer’s organizational goals and culture, so daily work revolves less around deep technical design and more about org alignment and strategy (which is why SIs sometimes get a bad rap on a tech forum like HNews).
It probably pays less, and it can be more stressful when you’re billing for (and justifying) every hour, but in my experience the way it tends to be more dynamic (new projects+teams+customers often) and how you get to see very direct impact is quite rewarding.
Developer Experience is gaining in popularity. Your clients are internal and your objective is to remove obstacles, create shortcuts, keep everyone happy and productive. Lots of it is communication, finding out everyone's pain points and discussing what is technically feasible to ease that frustration - so that may tickle your people/support string. Things that are/can be part of DevEx are DevOps/Platform Engineering/Infra/CI/CD, QA, IdP, internal frameworks, onboarding, etc. Fun stuff imo.
> I am just much more comfortable supporting existing software than building new software.
Having technical skills is required, but you'd be doing little to no coding or design work.
> Being an interface between business and tech.
A sales engineer matches this almost by definition.
> Just working with people in general!
The job is essentially entirely about working with people, both with the customers you're trying to sell to, and with the developers who are actually making the product.
Sounds like you may enjoy being a QA engineer. Good QA engineers are a really really good value add to a software team and can really save our ass. Technical QA engineers understand why things break, and are easy to coordinate with when preparing a larger release.
At my previous employer, the head QA engineer was the one pushing back at the PM when they were too ambitious. They basically owned the current "Is the next release still a buggy mess?" state.
> Wanted to work with tech from a more overarching level
> I get a huge sense of accomplishment seeing customers user our product’
> Interface between business and tech
You might like trying your hand in Professional Services either at a System Integrator like Deloitte or first-party in a product company (now often re-labelled as ‘forward deployed engineers’).
Their main problem space is getting customers to successfully use the product through marrying your understanding of the tech’s limitations and sweet spots with the customer’s organizational goals and culture, so daily work revolves less around deep technical design and more about org alignment and strategy (which is why SIs sometimes get a bad rap on a tech forum like HNews).
It probably pays less, and it can be more stressful when you’re billing for (and justifying) every hour, but in my experience the way it tends to be more dynamic (new projects+teams+customers often) and how you get to see very direct impact is quite rewarding.
Developer Experience is gaining in popularity. Your clients are internal and your objective is to remove obstacles, create shortcuts, keep everyone happy and productive. Lots of it is communication, finding out everyone's pain points and discussing what is technically feasible to ease that frustration - so that may tickle your people/support string. Things that are/can be part of DevEx are DevOps/Platform Engineering/Infra/CI/CD, QA, IdP, internal frameworks, onboarding, etc. Fun stuff imo.
Perhaps a sales engineer?
> I am just much more comfortable supporting existing software than building new software.
Having technical skills is required, but you'd be doing little to no coding or design work.
> Being an interface between business and tech.
A sales engineer matches this almost by definition.
> Just working with people in general!
The job is essentially entirely about working with people, both with the customers you're trying to sell to, and with the developers who are actually making the product.
Sounds like you may enjoy being a QA engineer. Good QA engineers are a really really good value add to a software team and can really save our ass. Technical QA engineers understand why things break, and are easy to coordinate with when preparing a larger release.
At my previous employer, the head QA engineer was the one pushing back at the PM when they were too ambitious. They basically owned the current "Is the next release still a buggy mess?" state.
Technical pre-sales?