Solutions Engineer

Confluent - Des Moines, IA

Full-time - Mid Level

Des Moines, IA

Publishing Industries

About the position

Confluent Solutions Engineers (Pre-Sales) play a pivotal role in the technical evaluation stage of the sales process, making them essential to customer success as real-time data streams gain importance in modern enterprises. In this position, you will collaborate closely with account representatives, acting as the technical advisor on the sales team. Your role will involve working intimately with product management and engineering teams, serving as a vital product advocate in front of prospects, customers, and the broader Kafka and Data Streaming communities. As a trusted advisor, you will assist Confluent customers in the technical design and development of their end-to-end solutions, ensuring they are well-informed about the current state and future roadmap of Kafka in open source. You will also identify known issues and communicate upcoming fixes or workarounds to customers. Your responsibilities will include clearly articulating Confluent's technical and product positioning to a diverse range of business and technical stakeholders, forging strong relationships with them throughout the sales cycle and beyond. This role requires exceptional presentation and communication skills, as you will be presenting to highly skilled audiences, including enterprise architects and C-level executives. You will need to demonstrate self-starter behavior and a strong desire to learn new technologies and tackle complex technical challenges. Additionally, proficiency in programming languages such as Java, Python, or SQL, along with experience in building or running cloud applications, will be crucial for success in this role.

Responsibilities

• Drive the technical evaluation stage of the sales process as a Solutions Engineer.
• Partner with account representatives to provide technical advice during the sales cycle.
• Work closely with product management and engineering teams to advocate for the product.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to customers in the technical design and development of their solutions.
• Articulate Confluent's technical and product positioning to various stakeholders.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with customers throughout the sales cycle.
• Identify known issues and inform customers of upcoming fixes or workarounds.
• Present technical information confidently to skilled audiences, including enterprise architects and C-level executives.

Requirements

• Previous sales engineering work experience.
• Experience building solutions with Apache Kafka.
• Work experience with data integration or application architecture.
• Understanding of systems operations concepts (disk, network, operating systems, etc).
• Experience building and operating distributed systems.
• Technical certifications such as a CS degree or cloud developer/architect/administrator.

Nice-to-haves

• Confluent Certified Developer or Confluent Certified Administrator.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes operations and cloud-based distributed computing.

Benefits

• Competitive pay and benefits in line with industry standards.
• Annual estimated salary of $132,400 - $155,610.
• Competitive equity package.
• Eligibility for additional commission and/or bonus pay.