Presales Podcast by Presales Collective What an AI-Enabled SE Looks Like in 2026 with Darlene Volas
Apr 13, 2026
Darlene Volas, a senior solutions engineering leader who builds AI-enabled SE teams, discusses practical AI workflows and tooling. She explores using AI beyond search, three AI usage buckets for SEs, operationalizing repeatable team processes, and hands-on sandbox projects to build fluency. Short, actionable takes on automation, competitive intel, and how to prototype AI solutions within teams.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Run Nightly Meeting Prep Agents
- Build nightly meeting-prep agents that surface relevant docs, past emails and tailored prompts for each external meeting.
- Jack describes his app that scans Google Drive, Obsidian and email and produces call-specific research every night.
AI Improves Quality More Than Time Saved
- AI often improves quality rather than saving time; expect the same prep time but much better outputs.
- Both hosts note AI makes SEs qualitatively better even when total hours don't shrink.
Pipe Call Summaries Into Your Systems
- Use live scribing and post-call summarization, then store outputs into CRM, data warehouse or Slack for downstream use.
- Darlene warns to decide storage targets now so summaries become searchable operational data rather than lost text.