Advisory Solutions Engineer

International Business Machines Corporation; Ahmedabad District; On-site; INR 1,800,000 - 2,800,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Global Sales is seeking a technically strong Solutions Engineer to drive pre-sales activities, blueprinting, and customer engagements across industries. You will collaborate with account teams to design streaming solutions, provide PoC support, and craft demonstrations that showcase value.

The role emphasizes cloud architecture, data integration, and automation, with opportunities to train customers and partners while advancing digital transformation.

Qualifications

• Deep understanding of Confluent technologies and streaming applications.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and data integration.
• Cloud deployment and application development experience.
• Experience with automation, GitOps, and Kubernetes.
• Fluent English communication.

Responsibilities

• Deep Expertise Development: understand Confluent technologies and streaming apps.
• Technical Discovery and POC/Pilot Solutions: gather requirements and aid blueprinting.
• Prospect demos and evangelization: craft tailored demos for prospects.
• Customer Engagement: provide technical assistance to drive usage and health.
• Knowledge Sharing: run trainings and workshops for customers and partners.
• RFP/Vendor risk assessment Support: assist with RFPs/RFQs.
• Technical Artifact Creation and Maintenance: build reusable artifacts and blueprints.

Skills

Solutions engineering

Pre-sales

Cloud architecture

Java

Python

SQL

Kubernetes

GitOps

English fluency

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

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

• Deep Expertise Development: Cultivate an in-depth understanding of Confluent’s technologies and the intricacies of building streaming applications.

• Technical Discovery and POC/Pilot Solutions: Collaborate with Confluent solutions engineers to gather requirements, identify use cases, and facilitate the development of Proof of Concept (POC)/Pilot solutions. Aid customers in overcoming technical challenges during initial blueprinting and use case deployment.

• Prospect Demos and Evangelization: Collaborate seamlessly with Confluent's Account Executives (AEs) and Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) to bring our offerings to new prospects. Craft and deliver tailored demos that go beyond the standard, showcasing the unique value proposition Confluent has to offer.

• Customer Engagement: Offer technical assistance in driving customer consumption through monthly customer health reports, Quarterly Business Reviews, and Quarterly Technical Reviews.

• Knowledge Sharing, Workshops, and Training: Support cross-functional teams, including Field Marketing, Partner Solutions by conducting training sessions and workshops/webinars for customers, partners, prospects, and internal teams to educate them on Confluent's platform/cloud, features, and best practices.

• RFP/Vendor risk assessment Support: Contribute to vendor risk assessments to ensure a comprehensive understanding of potential risks and opportunities associated with proposed solutions. Assist in answering Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and Requests for Quotations (RFQs).

• Technical Artifact Creation and Maintenance: Architect, build, and maintain reusable artifacts, including tools, prototypes, demos, workshops, and architecture blueprints.

Required technical and professional expertise

• Solutions Engineering or similar work experience in a technical pre-sales capacity.
• Process & Efficiency, a "scale" mindset. An ability to quickly leverage standardized demo environments, template proposals, and documented Proof of Concept (PoC) scopes to minimize preparation time.
• 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.
• Development or implementation experience in a cloud-based environment, along with Technical certifications (e.g., Cloud Developer/Architect, Data Engineering & Integration).
• Clear, consistent demonstration of self-starter behavior, a desire to learn new things and tackle hard technical problems.
• Managing multiple evaluation processes across various industry verticals and use cases, ability to be nimble and organized is a must
• Exceptional presentation and communications capabilities to all levels across an organization.
• Ability to explain complex concepts in plain, non-technical language that resonates with mid-level managers and business owners.
• Fluency in English is a requisite.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Previous 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.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.