Introduction
As the Regional IBM Z Client Skills Leader, you are an innovative thinker who is passionate about technology and loves to stay up-to-date on the latest developments and trends. You will be instrumental in building a large and thriving community around IBM Z and LinuxONE beyond traditional outlets. You will directly interact, consult, and influence leaders at IBM Z clients and surrounding academic communities to drive adoption of the IBM Z Ecosystem Skills programs. You will be an integral member and leader in the local IBM Z ecosystem partnering with internal and external organizations and user groups to coordinate and facilitate collaborative programs and events to drive platform awareness, skills, and advocacy. Working closely with the IBM Z Ecosystem Shared Services team, you will also be responsible for identifying, showcasing, and promoting regional success stories across both the internal and external community. In this role, you will collaborate and work across Sales, Product Management, University Relations, and the broader IBM organizations to identify and leverage synergistic opportunities to build a diverse, vibrant, sustainable, skilled IBM Z community.

The Regional IBM Z Client Skills Leader strives to be a key member of their local technology communities. Along these lines, regional leaders represent IBM at events, workshops, meetups, and conferences. They build relationships with individuals, companies, and organizations that serve the same communities as IBM. They build and nurture great relationships with users online, create useful content, educational material, and other collateral to engage clients and the community.

Your Role and Responsibilities

• Develop and Deliver client presentations on Talent Strategies
• Work 1:1 with clients to define Talent Strategy leveraging IBM Z Skills Programs and develop and drive an execution plan
• Showcase best practices, client success stories, and new mainframe talent through panels, videos, social media and media outlets, events, etc.
• Develop and lead proactive skills outreach programs and initiatives in coordination with the IBM account teams
• Partner across the local IBM teams to leverage SMEs and recruit advocates to engage in regional skills initiatives and programs
• Explore and expand regional skills programs for client participation and to meet the unique needs of the region
• Write blog posts, articles, create videos as well as participate in community events to increase community awareness and adoption of talent strategies
• Build and maintain proactive and positive relationships with leadership and staff across partner organizations including regional training partner ecosystem, regional academic community, IBM Z client community and lead intentional connections between ecosystem entities
• Provide feedback to the IBM product and services teams on behalf of clients
• Organize regional client involvement in skill and academic initiatives
• Facilitate local partnerships, including university relationships, to build an enterprise talent pipeline in coordination with local employers and worldwide programs including the IBM Z Student Ambassador Program
• Partner with Ecosystem Influencer team to foster synergies and collaborative initiatives
• Manage incoming ecosystem skills requests
• Coordinate regional community events, activities and digital interaction
• Liaise with the local external user groups and the local IBM Ecosystem teams
• Understand worldwide programs and determine local execution strategy
• Set, communicate and execute regional community strategy to meet metric attainment
• Ownership of the operational aspects and meeting adoption objectives of the IBM Z Skills programs across the AP region.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• 5+ years experience in a client facing role
• Experience organizing and running developer or client-facing events
• Excellent communication skills with proven experience interacting and influencing client and partner executives
• Self-motivated and passionate about helping others and interacting with the wider developer and IBM community
• Excellent interpersonal skills and comfortable in crowds and one-on-one
• Problem-solving skills and ability to work independently and manage tasks in a fast-paced environment with changing priorities and requirements.
• Experience working and collaborating across regions
• Strong understanding of regional social media services, mechanics, and trends
• Ability to work with cross-functional team members
• Ability to travel up to 50%
• Ability and flexibility to work effectively within a global team

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Experience as a Technical Advocate or Developer Community Manager
• Technical Sales experience
• Experience with Academia
• Understanding of emerging technologies and use cases
• Understanding and ability to work across the broader IBM teams
• Agile scrum experience
• Experience with IBM Z and LinuxONE