Sales Engineer - Networking

Summary

Sales Engineers for Celestica are the primary technical resource for the account management sales force and provide both pre-sales and post sales activities for new and existing customers. They are accountable to lead and manage the technology evaluation stage of the sales process, working closely with our sales and business teams to understand our customers’ challenges and solve for their requirements.  

The Sales Engineer will be the key technical advisor and product advocate for Celestica’s Hardware Platform Solutions in the field, and will collaborate with our design, engineering, manufacturing and supply chain teams to create and deliver maximum value to our customers.  The Sales Engineer will clearly articulate technology and product positioning and develop value propositions for both business and technical users.  The Sales Engineer must be able to establish and maintain strong relationships with assigned customers throughout the complete sales cycle and post-sales account support processes.
 

Responsibilities

• Work closely with Sales to drive the sales process and share in quota target objectives
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with key customer accounts – act as the primary product solutions interface
• Lead technical solution development for customers with requirements discovery / mapping the Celestica portfolio and software / use case / application requirements
• Lead the technical aspect of RFI/RFQ responses to strategic opportunities - develop proposals with unique value propositions that differentiate Celestica
• Support account management and sales team with technical solutions tailored to their specific customers’ needs including capabilities and roadmaps - remove all technical hurdles required to successfully close opportunities
• Obtain insights into customers’ product, technology and business strategy and contribute the insights as the inputs to Celestica’s Hardware Platforms Solutions roadmap
• Help to clarify customers’ product requirements and provide input into the development SOW
• Support technical conversations with the customers for product questions and issues post-win - act as a liaison to the internal development teams
• Keep current with technical directions of our key strategic partners, such as Intel, Microsemi, Broadcom, Microsoft, VMware, WDC and Samsung
• Participate in standards committees and industry groups as appropriate.
• Prepare and present technical presentations and product demonstrations to customers, industry groups, trade shows, etc
• Maintain current and advise customers on industry trends, future technologies and market opportunities

Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have a proven track record in enterprise networking sales and related technologies, and will thrive in the dynamic environment of a growing technical organization with an expanding customer base.  

• Communicate professionally and consultatively in written responses to emails, presentations, RFPs and reports
• Be organized and analytical, and able to overcome sales challenges through creative and collaborative approaches
• Be a self-motivated individual capable of working with a minimum of supervision in a dynamic team environment
• Have excellent interpersonal skills: be able to communicate effectively with members of other teams, departments and customers as a high degree of liaison is required to be successful
• Have at least 5+ years of direct experience in datacenter and access networking system sales to both enterprise and channel markets, in addition to five years of relevant technical experience in IT infrastructure
• Have experience with networking systems, topologies, applications, challenges and advantages
• Proven hands on capabilities with Linux, Windows, SAN and networking NOS technologies
• Experience with networking protocol, management, and security technologies and applications is a must
• Experience and familiarity with related storage and compute systems which rely on networks is a plus
• Experience with dominant network NOS environments, particularly SONIC is a plus
• Experience with standards, organizations and consortiums of relevant technologies is a plus
   

Physical Demands

• Duties of this position are performed in a normal office environment.
• Duties may require extended periods of sitting and sustained visual concentration on a computer monitor or on numbers and other detailed data. Repetitive manual movements (e.g., data entry, using a computer mouse, using a calculator, etc.) are frequently required.
• Frequent overnight travel may be required
• Duties of this position may require working very long hours for months at a time.

Typical Experience

• 11+  years of technology related engineering/marketing and business development experience.

Typical Education

• Have a B.S in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field

Notes

Overnight travel within North America will be required – estimate 25 - 40% depending on candidate’s location 
International travel may also be required, approximately 1-2 trips per year

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties and responsibilities of the position. Employees are held accountable for all duties of the job. Job duties and the % of time identified for any function are subject to change at any time.