Advisory Solutions Engineer

Introduction

At IBM Global Sales, we combine innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients address their most challenging business needs. Across industries and geographies, you’ll work with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-develop solutions that accelerate digital transformation and create durable impact. Success in Global Sales is grounded in curiosity, empathy, and teamwork. You’ll link technical know-how with strong interpersonal skills, build trusted relationships, and help shape solutions that benefit both business and society. With world-class onboarding, ongoing learning, and a supportive culture, IBM provides the tools and career growth opportunities you need. Join a global organization committed to innovation and meaningful change.

Your Role And Responsibilities

• Deep Expertise Development: Build and maintain a thorough understanding of Confluent’s technologies, including the complexities involved in creating streaming applications.
• Technical Discovery and POC/Pilot Solutions: Work with Confluent solutions engineers to capture requirements, pinpoint use cases, and support the creation of Proof of Concept (POC)/Pilot solutions. Help customers address technical obstacles during initial blueprinting and when deploying use cases.
• Prospect Demos and Evangelization: Partner with Confluent Account Executives (AEs) and Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) to introduce our offerings to new prospects. Develop and deliver customized demos that go beyond standard presentations, highlighting Confluent’s specific value proposition.
• Customer Engagement: Provide technical support to help customers drive consumption through monthly customer health reports, Quarterly Business Reviews, and Quarterly Technical Reviews.
• Knowledge Sharing, Workshops, and Training: Collaborate with 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: Assist with vendor risk assessments to ensure a complete view of potential risks and opportunities tied to proposed solutions. Support responses to Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and Requests for Quotations (RFQs).
• Technical Artifact Creation and Maintenance: Design, build, 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. Demonstrated ability to rapidly leverage 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.
• Development or implementation experience in a cloud-based environment, as well as Technical certifications (e.g., Cloud Developer/Architect, Data Engineering & Integration).
• Consistent demonstration of self-starter behavior, with a strong desire to learn new things and solve difficult technical problems.
• Ability to manage multiple evaluation processes across different industry verticals and use cases; nimble and well-organized execution is required.
• Strong presentation and communication skills across all levels within an organization.
• Ability to explain complex concepts in clear, non-technical terms that resonate with mid-level managers and business owners.
• Fluency in English is required.
  
  

Preferred Technical And Professional Experience

• Prior experience building solutions with Apache Kafka.
• Understanding 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.