Solutions Architect

ANACAPA Micro Products, Inc.; Oxnard (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

ANACAPA Micro Products, Inc. seeks a Principal Solutions Architect to lead and shape multi-family solution strategy, coach peers, and drive GTM efforts with sales, partners, and customers.

The role emphasizes technical depth, mentoring, and proactive knowledge sharing to advance Anacapa’s offerings. The successful candidate will define, develop, and support innovative technologies, deliver training, and guide solution design across complex customer environments while collaborating with

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
• Seven-year minimum technical pre-sales or technical architecting experience.
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise in specific technology.

Responsibilities

• Acquires deep technical depth in their role; is the “Go To” person for the solution, both technically and strategically.
• Performs a lead role in executing the “Go-to-Market” for new offerings.
• Designs technical solutions considering customer infrastructure and business opportunities; satisfies stakeholders.
• Reviews peers' designs for quality and accuracy.
• Determines and defines services that complement hardware/software engagements, estimates engineer effort.
• Operates beyond a ‘self’ focus to deliver high-quality solutions and develops standard templates and tools.
• Communicates and trains the team on changes in technologies, solutions, and approaches.
• Develops training materials for team members and promotes knowledge sharing.
• Coaches and mentors team members to improve technical, consulting, and sales skills.

Job description

The Principal Solutions Architect (SA) is expected to be subject matter expert in multiple families of solutions.

The SA is responsible for driving a variety of initiatives and projects, coaches and/or mentors others SAs; and strategically works with sales, partners and customers to uncover and increase emerging business opportunities.

The SA takes a lead role in defining, developing, and supporting solutions and new technologies; prepares the team to be successful through proactive training, sharing knowledge, and communicating best practices.

Responsibilities

Technology Leadership

• Acquires deep technical depth in their role; Is the “Go To” person for the solution, both technically and strategically; is on the forefront of their solution(s) and the implications for Anacapa offerings.
• Performs a lead role in executing the “Go-to-Market” for new offerings.
• Designs technical solutions not only considering the customer’s infrastructure but also the business limitations and opportunities; operates comfortably beyond standard approaches to satisfy the needs of all the stakeholders.
• Reviews peer’s designs for quality and accuracy.
• Determines and defines services that complement and/or round out proposed hardware and software engagements, estimates required engineer effort.
• Operates beyond a ‘self’ focus for the benefit of the team and the practice to better Anacapa technology leadership, execution, and overall relevance to our customers; develops standardized templates of deliverables, including the SoW framework, tools, demo lab and scripts, and services calculation (Calc); provides leadership to equip Anacapa to deliver the solution at a high level of quality.
• Communicates and trains the team on changes in technologies, procedures, solution implementations and approaches.
• Develops training materials for team members to use with Anacapa audiences.
• Promotes a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration by organizing knowledge bases, contributing regularly, and encouraging team members to contribute.
• Coaches and mentors team members to improve their technical, consulting, and sales skills.
• Acts as a resource to SAs and Account Managers for advice and recommendations on technical design issues and product choices.
• Conducts technical assessment and expertise evaluations during the candidate selection process.
• Assist managers with new hire SA leads shadow assignments; proactively provides assistance and guidance to new hires to accelerate productivity.
• Follows up on implemented solutions and identifies new opportunities that complement the work that was completed.
• Advises team members and sales prior to customer calls and/or sales strategy sessions.
• Assists customer in understanding their equipment maintenance contracts, upgrade needs, and renewals; analyses the most cost-effective approach for the customer (e.g. renew the contract or purchase new equipment and contract.)
• Incorporates financing (through manufacturer or third party) as part of the sales proposal and discussion; looks beyond the current infrastructure/problem toward a three to five year roadmap.
• Guides (compares and contrast) customers in their decision making within all tiers of Anacapa (e.g., Cisco vs. McAfee/Juniper) as well as with external competing technologies/solutions (e.g. Dell vs.NetApp/EMC).
• Initiates new event ideas; collaborates with Partners and Sales to design events that can be replicated by other SAs; secures funding to support Anacapa customer events.
• Delivers presentations and conducts sales conversations with confidence and credibility to C-level clients, both in small meeting and large group formats.
• Develops presentation content for the team.
• Delivers presentations and conducts sales conversations with confidence and credibility to C-level clients, both in small meeting and large group formats.
• Develops assessments improvements and demos for SAs to use as sales tools, identifies new ideas for cross-sell opportunities, teaches SAs in Sales on how to use these tools.
• Collaborates with Partners, ISAs, and AEs to drive mapped opportunities; fine tunes strategies and approaches to achieve greater sales results.
• Operates in a regular cadence with multiple partners to educate, plan, and execute on joint strategies in collaboration with multiple stakeholders (ISA, AE, SM, Field Sales); understands partner alignment in geography and leads customer opportunity mapping exercises; coordinates on-site partner visits.
• Shares best practices and effective territory planning approaches with peers to leverage successful approaches across the team.
• Shares best practices and tactics for enhancing profitability and closing deals.
• Acts as subject matter expert for marketing activities (e.g., marketing blog, content, references, videos, etc.); produces marketing-type documents and materials (e.g., data sheet, presentation, demo video) to use throughout the Practice
• Responds to questions about partner registrations, associated registration issues, and customer engagement history.
• Manages competing priorities and sets expectations with sales and other stakeholders through proactive communication, planning, and potential for return on investment.
• Leads the development of Bills of Materials, Statements of Work, RPFs, RFIs, and proposal content for cross-technology solutions with high levels of accuracy and quality.
• Maintains pre-sales pipeline data, develops plans, and takes actions to move opportunities to closure.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
• Seven-year minimum technical pre-sales or technical architecting experience,
• Demonstrated subject matter expertise in specific technology.

Other Requirements

• Stay up to date on products, applications, technical service, market conditions, competitive activities, advertising, and promotional trends through the reading of pertinent literature, seminars, and online training.
• Proficient in Microsoft office applications.
• Proven success and experience selling technologies solutions and services.
• Knowledge and proven success of engaging and working with sales teams.
• Ability to execute on territory goals and metrics.
• Ability to adapt and change to the business needs of the practice and team coverage model.
• Strong interpersonal and presentation skills, including consulting skills.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Strong passion for learning and teaching others.
• Motivated and self-starting.
• Ability to think creatively and come up with proactive ideas that will increase sales.
• Must be able to communicate effectively and in a constructive manner with management, peers and coworkers