Introduction
A Brand Technical Specialist role within Automation means working for a leader in AI-Powered products. Envision helping clients create a world with less repetitive work and more innovative decisions. Less unplanned downtime and more proactive insight. And less waiting on systems… So that their employees can invest more time on the work they love. Join us and co-create with clients on solutions that makes people more productive and improves business performance, so that they can change the world at a scale not previously possible.

Excellent onboarding and an industry leading learning culture will set you up for positive impact and success, whilst ongoing development will advance your career through an upward trajectory. Our sales environment is collaborative and experiential. Part of a team, you’ll be surrounded by bright minds and keen co-creators – always willing to help and be helped – as you apply passion to work that will compel our clients to invest in IBM’s products and services.

Your Role and Responsibilities
The Brand Technical Specialist (Senior Solutions Architect (SSA)) role within the sales process is to fully understand a prospect’s business problem and construct a solution around that problem leveraging IBM products. The Solutions Architect exhibits a high level of sales and business maturity, operates independently in pre-sales activities and has the proven ability to quickly understand business problems and find the appropriate IBM technology offerings and differentiators.

The Brand Technical Specialist (Solution Architect) represents the highest degree of technical architecture and design expertise within the IBM technologies, process and integration solutions space.

Objectives:

• Prospect Qualification: The SSA aids in qualifying prospects to assure they are well-aligned with IBM’s go-to market product and solution capabilities.
• Presales Lifecycle Management: The SSA provides high quality, business-oriented and technical support to the sales and pre-sales team to assure the product-oriented aspects of the sales campaign are strongly aligned with the business objectives of the prospect throughout the sales cycle.

Essential Job Functions

Prospect and Customer Facing

• Own and progress opportunities through the qualification, definition, proof/evaluation, proposal and closure stages of the sales cycle with attention to timelines.
• Respond to the functional and business requirements and capabilities sections of RFI/RFPs
• Engage with the sales representative and prospect to ensure a prospect’s business needs can be addressed with IBM’s go-to market capabilities.
• Listen, understand, and analyze the prospect’s business requirements and compose, validate, and present the best possible IBM solution
• Define POC/POV or custom demonstration scenarios and map functions of IBM products to prospects’ needs
• Lead team on implementation of POC/POV’s and custom demos. Ensure the demonstration fulfills the prospect’s requirements and highlight and differentiate IBM’s capabilities.
• Define the prospect’s target architecture that fulfills their business objectives. Work with the Account Executive to structure the proposal that meets the prospect’s target architecture.

Customer-Oriented Skills

• Experience engaging with senior leaders (CxO level) on various solutions and business problems. Able to listen and analyze a prospect’s requirements and present to a compelling business value message of the proposed solution
• Demonstrated ability to present technology solutions to executive levels with a focus on solutions selling
• Ability to craft, review and augment Proof Of Concept documents, SOWs, and various project plans involving IBM technologies.
• Ability to define architecture, design and oversight of key national projects, providing guidance and knowledge transfer to field resources.
• Able to work independently and multi-task while managing multiple opportunities at a time
• Ability to guide and consult customers on various levels of the organization.

Business and Leadership Skills

• Demonstrate a team attitude and leadership
• Ability to act as a mentor due to outstanding character, judgment and knowledge
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Proven ability to manage time and deliver on deadlines
• Experience developing and presenting clear and concise product briefings
  • Proven ability to unearth business requirements & Drivers
  • Proven ability to map business drivers & initiatives to technology offering & differentiators
• Ability to lead Discovery and Customer First Assessment Meetings to identify business value and ROI for complex business challenges

Technology and Consultative Skills

• Strong understanding of IBM’s Products including internal Architecture, with an ability to leverage these in the sales cycle.
• Strong experiences with implementation of IBM technologies in customer projects or Proof of Concepts.
• Provide planning, architecting and managing of solutions to highly complex problems and challenges

• Expert in providing best practices to customers and helping with IT Strategy and implementation planning – capacity, servers, deployment etc.
• Strong understanding and speaking knowledge about IBM’s platform or related platforms in the market
• Lead customer and internal Technical and Business meetings to guide attendees to a common goal.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Multiple years of practical architecture and design experience Integration technologies
• Multiple years in Consulting management role including, business development, mentoring, technology solutions development, basic marketing and relationship management
• Strong hands-on experience with IBM StreamSets
• Understanding of business infrastructure technology, network architectures and distributed computing
• Firm understanding and hands on experience with Cloud providers i.e. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle etc.
• Competency in various languages (e.g. Java, C/C++, Node.js, Python, R, Swift, .NET)

• Experience with Business Infrastructure concepts and technologies (SOA, Microservices, Docker, Kubernetes, VMWare etc…)
• Proven track record in handling multiple customers/opportunities at the same time and driving the opportunities to a successful sales closure.

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Expertise in the Automation Market: Demonstrated knowledge and proficiency in the automation market, enabling you to consult with clients and build trust (training on IBM’s Automation offerings will be provided).
• Degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering