Pre-Sales Solutions Architect, Home or Office based

Pre-Sales Solutions Architect, Home or Office based.

The role is responsible for providing Pre-Sales solution design support, to customers and sales teams.

This is specifically focussed on IT and Communications technologies. You will require Pre-Sales experience in IT and Communications technologies working with customers in the Public and Private sector. Experience of working with Public- sector customers is of particular interest.
Using a consultative, friendly and straightforward approach, you will be required to engage with our customers to understand their technical, operational and business requirements. You will then create innovative solutions which lead to sales success and deliver required customer outcomes.
You will be required to develop and maintain a detailed knowledge of IT vendors and partner capabilities, as well as internal capabilities. This knowledge will then be used to document designs, create bill of materials, estimate service requirements, construct support solutions, answer client questions, deliver presentations and respond to tenders.
You will also be required to proactively engage with IT partners to understand their solution roadmaps and to relay this information to customers and other stakeholders.
You will be responsible for providing technical leadership, strategic guidance and proactive technical advice to customers. You will have the experience and personal attributes which help form fantastic working relationships and deliver transformational results.
Key Responsibilities
• Understanding of the overarching business drivers and market trends for IT.
• Presenting high level technical road maps of industry trends and product developments, providing strategic advice to our customers in conjunction with the Sales team.
• The confidence in your own knowledge and experience to present your solutions with authority to our customer’s key decision makers and technical recommenders. Create and deliver technical presentations internally and to the customer.
• Educating sales and technical engineering teams to understand and learn Juniper network technologies, ensuring a view is portrayed that reflects the company’s proposition
• Leading technical network Pre-Sales customer meetings to establish and document a clear statement of requirements, plans and guidance.
• Translating Customer needs into Solutions which includes flexibility, availability (up time), business continuity, infrastructure and Cloud management, quality of service, security, equipment replacement, migration planning and post implementation support
• Providing technical network Pre-Sales assistance for proposal and formal tender responses with clear architecture diagrams, accurate equipment schedules, thoughtful method statements for migration planning and comprehensive risk analysis for the Customer and the company
• Contributing and owning (where relevant) responses to any formal tenders, proposals and Statements of Work (SOW) requests
• Proven track record in writing concisely and articulating Pre-Sales consultancy and paid consultancy assignments
• Provide written technical network solutions in a professional manner and to agreed timeframes. Demonstrating that we understand any customer questions or clarifications by providing responses which are accurate, unambiguous and concise when responding to formal Tenders and Request for Proposals
• Assisting Sales with the commercial assessment and viability of an opportunity
• Maintaining specific in-depth technical network accreditations and specialisations in Juniper. Keeping them up to date and if requested, undertaking appropriate accreditations. Disseminating information to a wider technical audience within the company
• Proficient in using Microsoft Office Suite including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Visio with a proven track record in writing concisely, articulately and convincingly in preparation of Pre-Sales consultancy and paid consultancy assignments.
• Work closely and collaboratively with the wider delivery team to provide defined services to the customer. Ensuring a good handover of Pre-Sales information and collateral to the delivery teams. This can include attendance at project meetings and workshops, if it’s deemed necessary for successful project delivery
• Understanding of the overarching business drivers and market trends for the customer technology stack and markets, specifically relating these to the client you are working for.
• Good knowledge of in scope solutions and the delivery of lifecycle management services such as capacity, availability, release and change management.
• Provide thought leadership insight, with proactive technical advice and guidance to the company’s most strategic clients. Primarily around the Networking portfolio.
• Drive new opportunities (and value add) within customer account. This includes assisting sales with the commercial assessment and viability of opportunities.
• Help form an excellent customer working relationship with key customer stakeholders.
• Become a technical network authority and perform a trusted advisor role (where needed) for the customers’ IT architecture/infrastructure/services.
• Providing technical network Pre-Sales assistance with clearly described designs (service and solution) and transition approach.
• Having a good understanding of relevant policies both internally and within our customer’s organisation. These could be in relation to Industry standards (ISO policies for example), security and health & safety.
• Act as a conduit for feedback and improvement to relevant vendors.
• Upskilling and knowledge transfer to IT staff.
• Contribute to the maintenance of up-to-date documentation and processes.
• Identify and act on scalability, capability and breakpoints within the IT environment.
• Provide Pre-Sales support to the account management functions.

Knowledge, Skills, Attributes and Experience
Essential
Knowledge & Skills
We expect you to have worked with a number of leading manufacturers of Cloud, infrastructure, networking and platform technologies and you should have familiar-ty and experience in the design and implementation of solutions in a number of the following areas:
• Network architectures, Data Centre, campus and Infrastructure as a Service
• Disaster Recovery and Backup solutions
• Public, Private and Hybrid network Cloud deployments
• Cloud connectivity options
• Virtualisation and Hyper-Converged solutions

In these technology areas we expect you to have:
• An excellent understanding of the competitive landscape
• Understand the benefits and concepts of solution scenarios such as Public, Private and Hybrid deployments
• A thorough understanding of best practice design methodology and industry standards
• A proven track record in solution design, migration design and documentation
• A good understanding of processes in-volved with installation, configuration and troubleshooting solutions/services
• Proven capability through Manufacturer accreditations
• A good understanding of operational support requirements and service de-signs
• Ability to estimate transition and operational support resource levels
• Act as the technical lead with bids and customer base
• Attend meetings with potential clients to determine technical and business requirements
• Provide written technical solutions in a professional manner and to agreed timeframes
• Work with Internal departments, including Marketing to maintain and develop propositions and the product portfolio
• Perform technical development for solutions as part of a design and development framework
• Experience of building, developing and maintaining complex cost models
• Understanding of how tooling and automation can reduce cost and deliver innovation

Key Role Attributes
We expect all our solution architects to be:
• Providing leadership to the bid/project team by own example of professionalism and dedication.
• A genuine interest and passion in technology
• Comfortable presenting in person, via conference call, and web demo plat-forms
• Willing and able to travel regularly in order to meet customers and to participate in customer and partner events.
• Thorough understanding of best practice design methodology and industry standards
• Ability to articulate complex technical topics, diplomatically address customer concerns, and multi-task in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to hit the ground running and adapt quickly to new challenges
• Strong and effective communicator with both oral and written communication skills
• Conduct your-self with a high level of sensitivity, discretion and integrity

Experience & Attainments
• We are looking for a minimum of 5 years in-depth Pre-Sales experience
• Hold IT certifications
• We are looking for a minimum of 5 years in producing proposal, architecture and design documentation
• We are looking for a minimum of 5 years in-depth in creating customer presentations and de-livery, either via video call or face-to-face meetings
• Hold, or be able to achieve SC clearance