Senior Solution Sales Engineer - Confluent

IBM; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Confluent in San Diego seeks a Solutions Engineer to drive early-stage evaluation and ongoing value realization for customers. You will work with Account Executives as the technical advisor, surfacing business needs and crafting designs to meet them.

The role involves guiding customers through adoption and removing blockers with innovative patterns. You will lead whiteboard sessions, deliver thought leadership, and collaborate with product and engineering to advocate for customers across

Qualifications

• 5+ years of Solutions Engineering or related experience.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and data integration.
• Knowledge of cloud architecture and deployment patterns.
• Automation, GitOps, and Kubernetes experience.
• Proficiency in Java, Python or SQL; cloud certifications are a plus.
• Strong self-starter mindset and desire to tackle hard technical problems.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills across audiences.

Responsibilities

• Advance new data streaming use-cases from design to Go-Live.
• Lead Technical Proofs of Concept and guide customer adoption.
• Conduct discovery and whiteboard sessions for new use-cases.
• Deliver technical talks and workshops to customers and partners.
• Assist customers with deployment best practices to mature operations.
• Analyze usage trends to identify optimization opportunities.
• Collaborate with product and engineering and advocate for customers.
• Build strong relationships with stakeholders and act as a trusted partner.

Skills

5+ years exp

Event-Driven

Data Integration

Cloud Architecture

Automation/GitOps

Java/Python/SQL

Cloud Certifications

Presentations

Stakeholder comms

Education

Bachelor's degree in a technical field

Tools

Kubernetes

Git

SQL tooling

Job description

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.

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, & 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 Technical And Professional Expertise

• 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 Technical And Professional Experience

• 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.