Senior Solutions Engineer- Confluent

International Business Machines Corporation

Boston (MA)

Hybrid

USD 83,000 - 125,000

Full time

10 days ago

Get a reply from this employer

Your resume and cover letter, tailored to exactly what they’re hiring for.

Get past ATS filters

Job summary

IBM Australia Limited is seeking a Senior Solutions Engineer in Melbourne to help clients solve complex business challenges by combining technical depth with business acumen. You will partner with Account Executives and cross-functional teams to design architectures and guide customers toward successful adoption of Confluent and data streaming patterns.

The role requires leading discovery, delivering proofs of concept, running workshops, and mentoring peers, with a hybrid work arrangement and

Qualifications

5+ years of experience in Solutions Engineering, Sales Engineering, Solution Architecture, or a similar customer-facing technical role.
Experience with distributed systems, event-driven architectures, streaming or messaging platforms.
Strong communication and presentation skills.
Hands-on experience with Java, Python, SQL, or similar technologies.

Responsibilities

Lead technical discovery with prospects and customers to uncover business drivers, technical requirements, risks, and success criteria.
Design and present solution architectures that clearly connect Confluent capabilities to customer outcomes, technical constraints, and long‑term platform strategy.
Own and drive technical evaluations, proofs of concept, and proof of value activities from initial scope through technical win.
Run workshops, white boarding sessions, and architecture discussions with developers, architects, platform teams, and business stakeholders.
Help customers adopt best practices for data streaming, cloud, hybrid, and event‑driven architectures as they move from individual projects toward broader platform adoption.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Support, Professional Services, and Customer Success to remove blockers, shape solutions, and improve customer outcomes.
Contribute to account strategy with Account Executives by helping qualify opportunities, build champions, and strengthen the technical and business case for change.
Create reusable assets such as demos, presentations, reference architectures, discovery patterns, or enablement material that scale beyond a single account.
Mentor other Solutions Engineers by sharing best practices, giving constructive feedback, and helping lift the technical quality of the wider team.

Skills

Solutions Engineering

Sales Engineering

Customer-facing

Discovery

Communication

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Master's Degree

Tools

Java

Python

SQL

Kafka

Apache Flink

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.

Your role and responsibilities

Solutions Engineers at Confluent play a critical role across the customer journey. They help customers evaluate the platform, design the right technical approach, prove value quickly, and build confidence in adopting data streaming patterns that solve meaningful business problems. This role sits at the intersection of technical depth, customer discovery, solution design, and business value articulation.

In this role, you will partner closely with Account Executives and cross-functional teams to uncover stated and unstated customer needs, shape strong technical strategies, and guide customers toward successful adoption of Confluent. You will be expected to lead technical discovery, own the technical win, and build trusted relationships with technical and business stakeholders.

What you will do

Lead technical discovery with prospects and customers to uncover business drivers, technical requirements, risks, and success criteria.
Design and present solution architectures that clearly connect Confluent capabilities to customer outcomes, technical constraints, and long‑term platform strategy.
Own and drive technical evaluations, proofs of concept, and proof of value activities from initial scope through technical win.
Run workshops, white boarding sessions, and architecture discussions with developers, architects, platform teams, and business stakeholders.
Help customers adopt best practices for data streaming, cloud, hybrid, and event‑driven architectures as they move from individual projects toward broader platform adoption.
Partner with Product, Engineering, Support, Professional Services, and Customer Success to remove blockers, shape solutions, and improve customer outcomes.
Contribute to account strategy with Account Executives by helping qualify opportunities, build champions, and strengthen the technical and business case for change.
Create reusable assets such as demos, presentations, reference architectures, discovery patterns, or enablement material that scale beyond a single account.
Mentor other Solutions Engineers by sharing best practices, giving constructive feedback, and helping lift the technical quality of the wider team.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

5+ years of experience in Solutions Engineering, Sales Engineering, Solution Architecture, or a similar customer‑facing technical role.
Experience working with distributed systems, event‑driven architectures, streaming or messaging platforms, data integration, and modern data platforms.
Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, networking, containers, Kubernetes, and modern application architectures.
Ability to run high‑quality discovery, map pain points to solution approaches, and communicate clearly with both technical and non‑technical audiences.
Experience leading technical evaluations, workshops, and customer presentations in complex enterprise sales cycles.
Strong communication and presentation skills, with confidence engaging developers, architects, and senior customer stakeholders.
Hands‑on experience with one or more of Java, Python, SQL, or similar technologies commonly used to build and integrate data‑driven applications.
A self‑starter mindset with strong judgment, curiosity, and the ability to learn quickly, operate independently, and solve ambiguous technical problems.
Proven ability to collaborate across functions and build trust with colleagues, customers, and partners.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Experience with Kafka, Apache Flink, stream processing, or real‑time analytics platforms.
Familiarity with value‑based selling, MEDDPICC or similar qualification frameworks.
Experience creating repeatable demos, technical content, playbooks, or enablement material for the broader field organization.
A track record of mentoring peers and influencing team practices beyond your own accounts.
Comfort engaging senior customer stakeholders and helping shape larger platform or transformation discussions.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM has a global presence, operating in more than 175 countries with a broad‑based geographic distribution of revenue. The company’s Global Markets organization is a strategic sales business unit that manages IBM’s global footprint, working closely with dedicated country‑based operating units to serve clients locally. These country teams have client relationship managers who lead integrated teams of consultants, solution specialists and delivery professionals to enable clients’ growth and innovation. By complementing local expertise with global experience and digital capabilities, IBM builds deep and broad‑based client relationships. This local management focus fosters speed in supporting clients, addressing new markets and making investments in emerging opportunities. Additionally, the Global Markets organization serves clients with expertise in their industry as well as through the products and services that IBM and partners supply. IBM is also expanding its reach to new and existing clients through digital marketplaces.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on‑going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can‑do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM 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, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following submission of your application.

Mute Volume control Press TAB to open volume control Use the arrows to control the volume

Speed

Captions

Settings

Turn on Picture in picture

Show Full screen

Search in video

You can search the video captions for specific words or phrases.

Hide Transcript

Skip transcript

Skip transcript Activates to move focus to the Resume AutoScroll button