I made this same move about a year ago. Went from an engineer manager (managing 20ish people) to a Solutions Engineer, and got the same pay (base salary was a d

I made this same move about a year ago. Went from an engineer manager (managing 20ish people) to a Solutions Engineer, and got the same pay (base salary was a dash higher, total comp was a dash lower because of the bonus structure I had been a manager at the time). It'll work itself out after one raise, so I'm not too worried. I enjoy this job a lot more than engineering all day or managing all day, it's been a great move. What worked for me was I had industry-specific non-technical knowledge. I had come from managing an online virtual events software team and took a job at a WebRTC vendor. Since I had been on the CUSTOMER side before with another similar vendor, I knew exactly how their customers felt. Even though I didn't have direct experience selling the same product, the company I now worked at loved that I had experience on the buying side of it. I recommend looking at some of the vendors you already work with, seeing which one interests you, and applying to work with them or at one of their competitors (e.g. if you work with AWS stuff, apply at AWS, GCP, and Azure). Make sure you LIKE THE PRODUCT and BELIEVE IN IT or else you'll have a tough time. It's unlike a "normal" software engineering job where you can have fun on just the tech and not necessarily care about the product, when you're helping on the sales side and don't believe in what you're helping to sell its WAY TOUGHER. I've "drank the kool-aid" on WebRTC and streaming video and have a lot of conviction when it comes to helping customers switch off from their other vendor to us. Be picky and patient with interviewing for this. Even more so than a normal engineering role. Don't be afraid to reach out to companies you really dig even if they don't have an open role at the time. In my experience, the interview process for this kind of a role was a lot more "people/personality" heavy rather than just pure tech-heavy because they know they're putting you in front of customers. They don't mind if you don't know everything because you can always ask an engineer on the product team for help, but they do mind if you don't have above-average social skills. My presentation skills are excellent because I've taken some public speaking classes and do stand-up comedy 2-3 times a week for fun, which was also a big help.