Jason M. Lemkin advises that any company doing technical sales must include a solution architect/solution engineer/sales engineer role (possibly covered by CEO, CTO, customer success, or an engineer-AE wearing two hats). The central mistake to avoid is hiring only generic account executives without anyone filling the solutions role.
One way or another, you need a solution architect department, whether that's the CEO or the CTO in the early days, which is often the case, whether it's sometimes the customer success team will play that role, whether you grab one of your top engineers to do it. The reality is, if you have a technical sale, there's always a solution architect, solution engineer, sales engineer in there. Once in a while you'll get an AE that was an engineer themselves. So they're wearing two hats. No, Sometimes if someone else on the team can do it, great. But the biggest mistake in technical sales is when you hire a generic AE and don't put anyone. No solution of any form, no chance.
