Advisory Solutions Engineer

Introduction

At IBM Global Sales, we combine innovation, teamwork, and deep expertise to help clients tackle their most challenging business problems. Across industries and geographies, you’ll work alongside colleagues, clients, and partners to co-develop solutions that enable digital transformation and create lasting impact. Success in Global Sales is driven by curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll pair technical insight with strong interpersonal skills to build trusted relationships and shape solutions that benefit both business and society. With top-tier onboarding, ongoing learning, and a culture that supports growth, IBM provides the tools and opportunities to advance your career. Join a global team committed to innovation and meaningful change.

Your Role And Responsibilities

• Deep Expertise Development: Build and maintain an in-depth understanding of Confluent’s technologies and the details involved in creating streaming applications.
• Technical Discovery and POC/Pilot Solutions: Partner with Confluent solutions engineers to gather requirements, determine use cases, and help enable Proof of Concept (POC)/Pilot solution development. Support customers in resolving technical challenges during early blueprinting and use case deployment.
• Prospect Demos and Evangelization: Work closely with Confluent Account Executives (AEs) and Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) to introduce our offerings to new prospects. Create and deliver customized demos that go beyond the standard experience, clearly demonstrating Confluent’s unique value proposition.
• Customer Engagement: Provide technical support to encourage customer adoption through monthly customer health reports, Quarterly Business Reviews, and Quarterly Technical Reviews.
• Knowledge Sharing, Workshops, and Training: Help cross-functional teams, including Field Marketing and Partner Solutions, by leading training sessions and workshops/webinars for customers, partners, prospects, and internal teams. Educate audiences on Confluent’s platform/cloud, features, and best practices.
• RFP/Vendor risk assessment Support: Support vendor risk assessments to ensure a thorough understanding of potential risks and opportunities tied to proposed solutions. Assist in responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and Requests for Quotations (RFQs).
• Technical Artifact Creation and Maintenance: Design, develop, and maintain reusable assets, including tools, prototypes, demos, workshops, and architecture blueprints.
  
  

Preferred Education

Master's Degree

Required Technical And Professional Expertise

• Solutions Engineering or similar work experience in a technical pre-sales capacity.
• Process & Efficiency, a 'scale' mindset. Ability to quickly use standardized demo environments, template proposals, and documented Proof of Concept (PoC) scopes to reduce preparation time.
  
  

Experience with Event-Driven architecture, Data Integration & Processing Techniques, Database & Data Warehouse technologies.

• First-Hand experience with Cloud Architecture, Migrations, Deployment & Application Development.
• Experience with Automation, GitOps and Kubernetes.
• Proficiency in Java, Python or SQL.
• Experience developing or implementing in a cloud-based environment, plus Technical certifications (e.g., Cloud Developer/Architect, Data Engineering & Integration).
• Demonstrated self-starter behavior with a strong motivation to learn new things and work through complex technical problems.
• Ability to manage multiple evaluation processes across different industry verticals and use cases; nimble and organized execution is required
• Exceptional presentation and communication skills across all levels of an organization.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts in clear, non-technical language that aligns with mid-level managers and business owners.
• Fluency in English is a requisite.
  
  

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Prior experience creating solutions with Apache Kafka.
• Knowledge of systems operations concepts (disk, network, operating systems, etc).
• Experience with software development tools, infrastructure automation, and CI/CD tooling (Terraform, Ansible) is a plus
• Experience building and operating large-scale systems.
• Experience in technical pre-sales or consultative roles.