Presales Solution Architect

Verizon; Reading; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Verizon is seeking a Solutions Architect in EMEA to lead the design of complex, high-impact solutions for enterprise customers. You will build trusted adviser relationships, identify opportunities, and ensure alignment of business objectives with Verizon technology offerings.

You will collaborate with sales and engineering teams to craft innovative, scalable networks and cybersecurity solutions, travel as needed, and contribute to a strong customer-centric delivery mindset within a hybrid work

Qualifications

• Minimum education and relevant work experience in IT or engineering.
• Experience as a pre-sales solution architect for multinational clients.
• Experience interacting with customer stakeholders in a sales cycle.

Responsibilities

• Identify and qualify business opportunities and craft strategies to leverage technology.
• Propose integration architectures and platforms for full solutions using best practices.
• Manage technical relationships with customers and drive proof-of-concept work.
• Collaborate with customers to design use cases leveraging Verizon portfolio.
• Position Verizon as a thought leader on key technologies.
• Travel to client sites and events as required.

Skills

Pre-sales experience

Customer engagement

Cross-functional collaboration

Travel willingness

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or Engineering

IT-related subject or equivalent experience

Tools

Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Networking hardware

Firewalls

VPNs

Job description

When you join Verizon You want more out of a career. A place to share your ideas freely - even if they’re daring or different. Where the true you can learn, grow, and thrive. At Verizon, we power and empower how people live, work and play by connecting them to what brings them joy. We do what we love - driving innovation, creativity, and impact in the world. Our V Team is a community of people who anticipate, lead, and believe that listening is where learning begins. In crisis and in celebration, we come together - lifting our communities and building trust in how we show up, everywhere & always. Want in? Join the #VTeamLife.

What You’ll Be Doing...

Exciting opportunities exist within the Verizon Presales Engineering organization. As a Solutions Architect in EMEA, you will be an integral part of a talented team collaborating with global organisations to bring their digital transformation to life. You’ll play a high impact role through building long-term business relationships within assigned enterprise accounts (and colleagues within sales), identifying and qualifying sales opportunities and designing complex solutions to address our customer business challenges. At Verizon, we do much more than sell technology. We deliver innovative solutions that improve the agility, productivity and global reach of businesses. We lead. No one can match our capability to design, build and operate integrated global networks, and cutting-edge, secure information systems, and you’ll be helping to not only continue but to build on this reputation. You will work in a consultative way, effectively becoming a trusted adviser to our customers and target new logos. Our solution architects are ideally positioned to understand the customer’s high-level objectives and match these to Verizon solutions in order to satisfy business and technical requirements.

Responsibilities Will Include

• Identifying and qualifying business opportunities, and developing the strategy to use technology to achieve objectives.
• Recommending integration strategies, architectures, platforms and application infrastructure required to successfully implement a complete solution using best practices.
• Owning the technical relationship with Verizon customers, including managing product and solution briefings, producing proof-of-concept work, and the coordination of additional technical resources.
• Working directly with customers to create solutions and use cases that leverage the Verizon portfolio.
• Positioning Verizon Business as thought leader on key technological developments.
• Consistently developing and expanding your technical knowledge to deliver quality services and solutions to our clients.
• Traveling to client sites, conferences, and other related events to represent Verizon as required.

What We’re Looking For...

You are an experienced solution architect who enjoys working with business customers to create high quality technology based solutions. You enjoy building strong working relationships to uncover the core of challenges that businesses face, and make proposals to help them overcome those. You’re a team player, who can work effectively with cross-functional colleagues to create and present powerful sales proposals and bring solutions to life.

You’ll Need To Have

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or an IT related subject, or relevant work experience.
• Experience of working as a pre-sales solution architect for a managed services provider, and dealing with multinational businesses as customers.
• Experience of direct interaction with customer stakeholders as part of a sales process.
• Experience of architecting and developing network and cybersecurity solutions for large enterprise customers and producing and presenting responses to requests for proposals (RFPs).
• Knowledge of software defined networking, routing, VPNs,and firewalls.
• Knowledge of data and information security - especially as it relates to issues within businesses.
• Experience in two or more of the following areas: Software Defined Networking (SDN), IT infrastructure and systems security, cloud or network systems management, and business continuity.
• Willingness to travel as the role requires (expected to be 25-50% of the time)
• A valid UK Driver's License.

Even better if you have one or more

• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to create a high level of audience engagement
• Experience of working with multinational organisations and leading the development of global solutions.
• The ability to quickly learn, understand, and work with new and emerging technologies, methodologies and concepts that relate to networking, cybersecurity and data communications.
• Knowledge of data and information security, particularly where it relates to challenges within businesses.
• Experience of running multiple projects or deals simultaneously under tight timelines.
• Industry recognised certifications or such as AWS Solution Architect, Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK), CompTIA Security+, Cisco Certified Design or Network Associate, ITIL Foundations, or similar.
• Experience of implementing and designing solutions that incorporate more than one the following: Data and IP Services, Cloud Services, Security Services or Contact Center Technologies.
• Knowledge and experience of utilising Artificial Intelligence and related tools to enhance performance and gain efficiencies.

If Verizon and this role sound like a fit for you, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every "even better" qualification listed above.

Where you’ll be working

In this hybrid role, you'll have a defined work location that includes work from home and assigned office days set by your manager.

Scheduled Weekly Hours

40

Equal Employment Opportunity

Verizon is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, gender, disability or any other legally protected characteristics.