As a former employee at a competing email security vendor, Blair Dalziel joined Abnormal with a deep understanding of the competitive landscape and a firsthand perspective on what other solutions get right and where they fall short. A year and a half later, that background has become one of his biggest assets, and the SE role at Abnormal has turned into something he didn't expect to find anywhere else.

The Job Changes Every Day

Ask Blair what a typical day looks like, and he'll tell you there isn't one. "A day in the life of an Abnormal sales engineer can vary quite a bit," he said, "but it all centers around how I can better provide value to new prospects or existing customers."

Some days that means building data reports. Others, it's creating anonymized attack examples to show prospects the advanced threats moving across the industry. And often, it's walking a new customer through a live demo of the platform to show them what Abnormal catches that their current solution misses.

That variety is the point. The SE role at Abnormal sits at the intersection of technical depth, customer empathy, and creative problem-solving. No two conversations look alike because no two environments do.

When the Product Proves Itself in Real Time

The moments Blair remembers most are the ones where the demo stops being a demo and starts being a wake-up call.

During one customer walkthrough, Blair pulled up an attack that Abnormal would have caught but their existing solution let through. The customer's reaction was immediate. "He told us that the attack caused him about two days worth of remediation headaches," Blair said. "It had spanned about 270 different people, including individuals' laptops at home that they decided to forward it to."

Showing that customer how Abnormal would have stopped the attack before it ever reached an inbox, saving 48 hours of cleanup, was the kind of moment that makes the role real. "Being able to show him that Abnormal would have stopped that attack right from the start and saved him 48 hours of headache was really key."

For Blair, those moments add up. Working in mid-market, he often meets smaller organizations without large cybersecurity budgets or a fully built-out security stack. "When we're able to come in and show them that we can in fact stop the emails and the attacks that they've been suffering from for years," he said, "it truly brings a smile to my face when it brings a smile to their face."

Bringing a Competitor’s Mindset

Before Abnormal, Blair worked at a competing email security company. That experience gave him something most SEs don't walk in with: an insider's understanding of a rival product's strengths and gaps.

"Coming from a competitor not only allowed me to join the team with a concrete understanding of email security and best practices," Blair said, "but it also allowed me to bring a wealth of knowledge about the benefits and drawbacks of that solution."

That knowledge translates directly to customer conversations. When Blair goes up against his former employer in a deal, he knows how to position Abnormal's value clearly. "I'm able to show the value of Abnormal over that other solution and help customers understand that Abnormal will be the right choice for them for the long haul."

Building Tools, Sharing Everything

Blair's instinct to solve problems extends beyond customer calls. When prospects started requesting CSV exports of every attack Abnormal detected, he noticed a friction point: filtering out messages that never reached the inbox was tedious, manual work.

So he built a script to automate it. "What I ended up building was a script to automatically remove those messages so that it cleans up your file," he said. "It's no longer a manual task of deleting hundreds of thousands of lines of messages."

He shared it with the SE team and the response surprised him. "Everyone loved it. Everyone was able to go and share it or implement it into their own solution, and then also create ideas on how we can better expand that and how we can better improve it."

That reaction says something about Abnormal's culture. Individual wins turn into shared tools. "It's always an organization of collaboration," Blair said.

Sharpening the Craft With AI

Abnormal encourages every team to use AI in their work, and Blair has found his own rhythm with it. He describes himself as "a little bit more old school" when it comes to note-taking during calls, but what happens after the call is where AI changes things.

"What I can then do with some of the tools that we use is re-review that call and ask AI not just what I might have missed," he said, "but where I can be better, where I could have shown value, or where I could have dug in deeper in some discovery questions for customers."

That feedback loop helps him refine his approach over time: sharpening talk tracks, rethinking discovery questions, and getting more precise about matching the product's value to each customer's specific needs.

People First, Always

When Blair left his previous company, one thing worried him more than anything technical: losing his team. "We end up developing almost families in that community," he said, "and moving into an organization that is fully remote can be a little bit scary."

That worry lasted about a day. "When I came into Abnormal, my SE organization welcomed me with open arms." The kindness and willingness to cooperate extended far beyond his immediate team. "That is everyone in go-to-market, everyone in product and development. We truly are an organization that cares about people."

Meeting his Northwest pod in person for the first time reinforced it. "I had always talked with them on Zoom calls and Slack calls, but actually being able to go and have a conversation, shake their hand, was always so much better than I had thought."

Those in-person moments, a few times a year, turn coworkers into friends. For Blair, they're the highlight of his time at Abnormal.

He also points to something specific about how the company hires. "They don't hire on talent alone," he said. "They hire on will you be able to fit the team and will you be able to progress the team." That intentionality shows up every day. "It's all about that collaboration that we all have and being human and being kind."

Creative, Collaborative, Constructive

Asked for his advice to anyone considering an SE role at Abnormal, Blair keeps it simple. "Do it."

He describes the SE team as organized around three C's: creative, collaborative, and constructive. "We are always looking to better ourselves and always looking to help better others," he said. "It's one of the teams that genuinely has your best interests at heart."

And when he thinks about what keeps him here, it comes back to the small wins with customers and the bigger vision from leadership. "The vision that our founders have for where Abnormal is going and how much we're going to grow truly makes me excited to be working for such an amazing company."

Want to see what the SE role looks like from the inside? Check out our open roles and join us.