Senior Solution Sales Engineer - Confluent

Introduction At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you’ll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that’s passionate about driving innovation and making a difference. Your Role and Responsibilities About the Role: Solutions Engineers at Confluent drive not only the early-stage evaluation within the sales process, but also play a crucial role in enabling ongoing value-realization for customers, all while helping them move up the adoption maturity curve. In this role you'll partner with Account Executives to be the key technical advisor in service of the customers. You'll be instrumental in surfacing the customers' stated or implicit Business Needs, and coming up with Technical Designs to best meet these needs. You may find yourself at times facilitating art of the possible discussions and storytelling to inspire customers in adopting new patterns with confidence, and at other times driving creative solutioning to help get past difficult technical roadblocks. Overall, we look upon Solutions Engineers to be a key cog within the Customer Success Team that help foster an environment of sustained success for the customer and incremental adoption of Confluent's Technology. What You Will Do: * Help advance new & innovative Data Streaming use-cases from conception to Go-Live * Execute on and lead Technical Proofs of Concept * Conduct Discovery & Whiteboard Sessions to develop new use-cases * Provide Thought Leadership by delivering Technical Talks and Workshops * Guide customers with hands-on help and best practice to drive operational maturity of their Confluent Deployment * Analyze Customer Consumption trends and identify Optimization opportunities * Work closely with Product and Engineering teams, and serve as a key Product advocate across the Customer, Partner and Industry ecosystem * Forge strong relationships with key customer stakeholders and serve as a dependable partner for them Required Skills * 5+ years of Solutions Engineering or similar work experience * Experience with Event-Driven architecture, Data Integration & Processing Techniques, Database & Data Warehouse technologies * First-Hand exposure to Cloud Architecture, Migrations, Deployment & Application Development * Experience with Automation, GitOps and Kubernetes * Proficiency in Java, Python or SQL * Technical certifications - Cloud Developer/Architect, Data Engineering & Integration * Clear, consistent demonstration of self-starter behavior, a desire to learn new things and tackle hard technical problems * Exceptional presentation and communications capabilities. * Confidence presenting to a highly skilled and experienced audience, ranging from developers to enterprise architects and up to C-level executives Preferred Skills • Acquisition Agreement Knowledge: Experience with acquisition or integration agreements, understanding terms and conditions, and implementing compliance measures. • Incentive Plan Optimization: Experience in analyzing and optimizing incentive plans to meet business objectives, ensuring alignment with organizational goals. • Stakeholder Engagement: Experience in building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders, facilitating collaboration and communication to drive successful outcomes. Additional Details (US) IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to: - Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being - Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs - Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law - Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals - Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law. This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role. Compensation, Benefits and Work Authorization The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year. This position is eligible for participation in an IBM Sales Incentive plan. Actual incentive opportunity will be based on performance and the eligible Target Incentive, as addressed in the applicable plan, all of which is subject to change. The compensation range listed for this position is the IBM Reference Salary that is used when you are not actively participating in a sales plan. Your actual base pay plus incentive opportunity will be determined by the Incentive Plan assigned to you. IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship. JobAdX