Customer Solutions Engineer (Mechanical Engineering - Aerospace & Defense Focus)

What is Solutions Engineering at CoLab?

Solutions Engineering at CoLab is a team of mechanical engineers who sit at the intersection of product, sales, and customer success. They act as product experts, industry experts, and the voice of the customer—playing a critical role in helping prospects and customers realize the full value of CoLab.

The team operates across three core functions:

• Solutions Engineers (SEs): Focus on the pre-sales experience, partnering with prospective customers to evaluate CoLab and understand how it fits into their workflows and engineering challenges.
• Customer Solutions Engineers (CSEs): Work with existing customers to drive complex deployments and transform how teams collaborate. They help organizations adopt new ways of working enabled by CoLab to achieve ambitious outcomes.
• Mechanical Forward Deployed Engineers (MFDEs): Partner closely with specific customers to design and build tailored solutions for unique or high-impact problems, working alongside dedicated software engineering resources at CoLab.

While this role is focused on the Customer Solutions Engineer function, the strongest candidates bring a skill set that can flex across all three areas. Solutions Engineers at CoLab are not siloed—they are adaptable, customer-centric, and capable of contributing wherever they can drive the most impact.

All three functions regularly:

• Prepare and deliver engaging, specific demos that showcase how CoLab addresses customer pain points and delivers unique value.
• Partner with Account Executives and Customer Success Managers to solve challenging customer problems across diverse mechanical design and engineering use cases.
• Understand a customer’s current-state workflows, pain points, and how they map to business outcomes.
• Map how customers work today to CoLab’s capabilities, and challenge them on new ways of working with what CoLab unlocks.
• Be a trusted advisor to customers and prospects, on what is possible with AI in the context of mechanical engineering today, and in the future.
• Partner with Product Managers on new product initiatives to incorporate the perspective of a mechanical engineer in what we’re building.
• Share customer insights with Product to ensure we’re always building what our customers need.
• Act as an instructor to cross functional teams at CoLab for engineering topics. Example: “What is Injection Molding, what is DFM in this context.”
• Work with Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, and Product to improve go-to-market strategy and enhance the customer experience.

Aerospace & Defense Focus

CoLab is quickly growing its customer base within Aerospace and defense. This role will work across all types of customers in the short term, with a shift towards prioritizing A&D customers in the medium term (6 months).

What You Specialize in as a CSE

CoLab is a category-creating product, which means adoption isn’t a rollout—it's a change in how an engineering organization works. In aerospace and defense, that change runs into decades-long programs, rigorous configuration control, and processes that exist for good reason. As a Customer Solutions Engineer, you specialize in making new ways of working stick inside that environment, and in proving the value at each step so it spreads.

You will specialize in:

• Mapping a customer's current-state design review and engineering workflows, and defining the target-state process their teams will actually adopt.
• Leading change management across engineering teams, turning an initial deployment into a durable way of working, not a pilot that fades.
• Deploying and tuning CoLab’s AI capabilities against a customer's own standards, drawing checklists, and design guidelines, and diagnosing what's working and what isn't.
• Clearly articulating business value, ROI, and impact to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Expanding adoption into new teams, programs, and sites within the account, partnering with the Customer Success Manager on where the next opportunity sits.
• Applying aerospace and defense domain expertise—configuration management, program review gates, supplier and prime dynamics, and the realities of working in export-controlled environments.

What you’ll need:

• Brings broad industry exposure—whether in automotive, aerospace, heavy equipment, medical devices, or another complex mechanical space.
• Equally comfortable in front of a whiteboard or a C-level boardroom—able to translate engineering problems into business outcomes.
• Able to work cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Marketing, and CS teams.
• Strong communicator, adept at tailoring technical discussions to different audiences.
• Comfortable juggling multiple strategic and tactical initiatives in parallel.
• Industry Domain expert - you have deep knowledge and experience with knowledge of CAD/PLM tools
• Ability to comprehend use cases and demonstrate industry domain expertise to establish credibility with customers.
• Ability to break down complex topics into easy to digest information

Who you are:

• A mechanical engineer by background, with real-world experience in product development, engineering processes, and design in an Aerospace and Defense Environment.
• Experience with change management, and rolling out new tools/processes in an engineering environment.
• One team, one mission - you are a team player with an ownership mindset and no ego.
• Relationship builder - you are able to build trust and strong relationships with customers and internal CoLab stakeholders.
• Broadcaster - you have excellent communication and presentation skills, with a strong ability to convey your message.
• Achiever - you are able to make your own content, deliver demos, and autonomously strive to hit tough timelines
• Bonus points if you have been a solutions engineer or worked in customer success before.

The extra details:

• Compensation: This is a full-time, permanent position with a competitive compensation package that includes an executive stock options package.
• Benefits:
  • Canada: This role offers an extended health and benefits package that includes unlimited paid vacation and RRSP matching.
  • USA: This role offers health and dental insurance (covered at 100% for the employee) and unlimited PTO.
  • Remote/Hybrid Work: Our main office location is in St. John’s, NL where we offer hybrid and remote opportunities. This role has the flexibility to work from anywhere within Canada or the USA.

Travel Expectations

While this is a fully remote role, travel is a consistent part of the job. There are three primary types of travel you can expect:

• Team Weeks: Once per quarter, the sales team or entire company gets together in person. These typically involve traveling out on a Monday and returning on a Thursday or Friday. Two of these each year are held at our headquarters in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and the others take place in more central locations that evolve as the team grows.
• On-sites: For most of our large deployment customers, we will visit on-site during kick-off and key expansion opportunities. Most on-sites involve 1-2 days with the customer, with travel on either side. Travel is primarily within North America, and you can expect roughly one trip per month on average.
• Conferences: Solutions Engineers play a key role at industry events and conferences. These trips typically involve traveling out on a Monday and returning later that week. Conference attendance is shared across the team, and you can expect to attend one per year.