Starting Line: Why I’m Documenting My AI Transformation as an SE

The role of a Solutions Engineer, as with many other roles in tech, is being rewritten in real time. The goal of this journal is to chronicle my journey as a Solutions Engineer in the trenches who is experiencing this transformation while it is happening.

The situation

Agentic AI has put into question every single workflow, process, and responsibility of an SE. Some of the lowest hanging fruit include agents completing RFPs in minutes and AI notetakers providing detailed accounts of a customer meeting and follow-up tasks. This is really only scratching the surface of how AI is changing the role of an SE. For better or worse, the tidal wave of Agentic AI is coming and we all must learn how to swim in these new waters.

Why a public journal

I am choosing to document this journey publicly for two main reasons:

Journaling publicly forces me to prioritize the adoption of AI in my workflow. The journal cadence creates a deadline that would otherwise be easy to push off because the day-to-day consumes the entire day.
It serves as a public artifact of the AI journey undertaken by an SE, which I hope is useful for anyone else who is on or will begin a similar journey.

Who’s writing

I am an Enterprise Solutions Engineer in the cybersecurity/AI space. I have spent the last 20 years working in tech. First as a SWE and now as an SE. I am both adopting AI into my own workflow and selling AI products from the same chair, simultaneously sitting on both sides of the demo.

One-shot Wonder is clearly a pseudonym. This is by design. It limits how much I share about my employer and deals I am currently working on. However, anonymity gives me the space to speak with more candor.

What this won’t be

This is not a vendor scorecard or a tool review. There will be no generic thought leadership pieces on the “5 ways AI is shaping the future of the SE role.” I am not selling a course to help SEs level up with AI. There are plenty of other outlets for this type of content.

What this will be

Practical agentic workflows that worked for me. More importantly, workflows that didn’t. Honest tooling reviews with no sponsorship. Experiments that were successful and ones that failed.

Cadence

One journey entry per week is the goal, although life happens and I may miss a week. Occasional opinion pieces when it makes sense.

What’s coming next

The next entry will be Week 1: a workflow audit. This will serve as a baseline for my workflow before AI is deeply layered in. You can’t measure transformation if you don’t measure the starting state.

A question worth thinking about if you’re an SE: if you had to audit your own workflow this week, what would be the first thing you’d put on the list?