About the role

A Senior Solutions Consultant (SC) acts as the technical lead for all Informatica solutions on a strategic account. In this role the Principal SC interacts with Technical Decision Makers, Platform Managers, Solution Architects, Developers and Testers to educate our strategic clients on the best long-term approach with Informatica solutions aligned to their Enterprise Data and Platform Modernization use cases.  Confidence and executive presence while leading these client facing sessions is essential. A Principal SC will routinely explain and verify technical solution aspects of Informatica software on our most strategic accounts.

The Principal SC role will lead requirements gathering, customer qualifying, sales presentations and product demonstrations on Informatica software solutions – particularly Cloud Platform Modernization and Data Governance.  Efforts will involve assisting sales staff to assess industry standard application of Informatica products to meet customer needs - including detailed product specifications where required.  That may include detailed design, solution architecture guidance and some implementation specifications for enterprise software products, applications and solutions.  These solutions include but are not limited to: DBMS, BI, Enterprise Analytics, Data Warehouse, DI, ETL, Data Quality and the leading cloud vendor (AWS, Azure, Snowflake, Google Cloud Platform) solutions.

Parsing customer requirements into client facing technical demos is part of this role – as well as regularly creating rapid prototypes to support those demos. The Principal SC will provide consultation to various IT, management, and some executive facing decision makers regarding product capabilities, assessment and validation. This field Presales role requires travel to customer locations up to, and perhaps exceeding 50% of the time, based on the needs of the business.

Core responsibilities and activities

• This role collaborates closely with the Account Manager (AM) to
• Qualify and execute sales opportunity discovery
• Influence and shape strategic sales account strategy
• Communicate the key core value proposition, and key differentiators, and to confirm Informatica technical viability for the opportunity
• Complete technical RFIs and RFPs content, blending in competitive landscape, expected competitive behavior, and known competitive preferences in that context
• The Principal SC will own the technical sales process to
• Engage multiple touch points at the client coordinating the right resources (specialists, domain experts, possibly PM team experts) as necessary
• Recognize evolving competitive threats and alternatives in software architectures to adjust proposed solutions
• Manage development, delivery and/or orchestration of technical activities that drive technical validation, solution selection and technical closure with our strategic clients (technical presentations, POCs, demos…) 
• Collaborates with Implementation Team and Customer Success to ensure proper handoff from Sales to Implementation Provider (Partner/IPS) or Success Managers.
• Timely documentation within CRM / Marketing software for customer contact and activity data is routinely required (e.g. opportunity details, product information, sales stages, probability, business pain, firm-future commitments, etc.)
• Prior working knowledge of Informatica software is certainly a plus but not required. 
• Online and on-demand enablement for Sales and/or Presales will be required.
• Readiness to contribute feedback, materials, information that improves the quality of the SC community, Presales specific programs, and mentoring less experienced Presales staff is expected. 

Knowledge & Customer Facing Skills 

• Holds expert-level experience and uses professional concepts and company objectives to resolve complex issues in creative and effective ways
• Advice on competitive software industry stances and evolution of competitive threats in accounts (identify, evaluate their influence and positioning eg. SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is expected
• Deep industry knowledge and understanding of relevant software and integration process standards (e.g. ITIL, PMBOK Integration Management, Agile Software Process Management) will be required
• Expert-level presentation, customer service, financial/business acumen, and negotiation skills at all levels of customer engagement.  This often requires “big-picture” understanding of the business and technical contexts of key accounts
• Driven, self-starter who exudes leadership on account set and compels others to get on board
• Advanced technical knowledge of hybrid deployment of software solutions, Data Warehousing, Database, Big Data, and/or Business Intelligence software concepts and products