Solutions Engineer

Over the past several years, we have seen a continual increase in demand for PlatformDIGITAL® from our EMEA-based customers; this demand is projected to continue to grow substantially in the future. To enable us to better respond to these opportunities, we are having to think differently about how we work and how we structure ourselves. Our customers want us to think more globally, delivering a consistent, well-executed customer experience across the entire Digital Realty footprint, while ensuring the individual customer care that they have come to expect from our local operations. 

To help achieve this, we are scaling up our pre-sales capabilities in EMEA, with the intention of providing additional support to the in-country teams and improving the way we respond to our customers.

As part of the larger Sales Engineering team, you will support the Sales team in providing technical input to pre-sales activities and customer meetings in the EMEA region. You will be involved throughout the whole lead-to-contract process and ensuring that designed solutions are correctly transitioned to the delivery and support teams.  You will perform client and customer facing engineering functions in support of customer acquisition, installation and construction, for a range of Global and Enterprise customers.  You will work closely with interfacing teams during the pre-sales and design stages, acting as the “technical face” of Digital Realty until the customer’s network and equipment are ready for implementation.  At any given time, you will be contributing to multiple sales efforts at various stages.

You will need to build strong working relationships with the in-country Service Design teams, whilst being the primary technical interface between the various functions involved in supporting our customers. 

The primary focus for the role will be the main hyperscale customers and selected Global 2000 customers deploying into the EMEA region.

 The Role:

• Support the Global and Enterprise Accounts team in technical sales and solutions in the EMEA markets.
  • Current demand has resulted in us looking to strengthen our Solutions Engineering capability in the French and German regions, whilst also resulting in us creating a mobile EMEA based team to support other regions as required.
• Direct prospect engagements, including the leading of building and site tours, technical pre-sales calls and proposal generation, pricing and contract negotiations.
• Understand and document customer technical needs both from a critical infrastructure and fit-out perspective, to then design and present solutions to meet those needs.
• Act as the technical Subject Matter Expert for multi-site deployments, ensuring that the approach to the design, deployment and pricing of solutions is consistent across regions.
• It is critical that the in-country Solutions Engineers become the Subject Matter Experts of their region, this will involve attaining a deep understanding of the data centres in region including, but not limited to, critical electrical/mechanical infrastructure supporting the whitespace, security features, connectivity services and other site specific nuances. The in-country Solutions Engineers will take ownership for all      technical requirements associated with the opportunities that they support. 
• Liaise with internal stakeholders, including Design Engineering & Construction (DE&C), Service Operations, Asset/Portfolio and Implementation teams to ensure designed solutions meet customer needs whilst adhering to defined standards and production requirements.
• Work with other EMEA Solutions Engineers, Bid Management and Sales to serve as a coordination and review point for technical components of customer RFI/RFPs.
• Support Design Construction and Engineering (DE&C) Team by providing customer insight into future design workshops.
• Produce Statements of Works (requirements capture) suitable for third party partners to produce accurate pricing for customer proposals.
• Participate in forecasting, pipeline and market analysis.

Skills & Experience: 

The requirements listed below are representative, but not exclusive, of the knowledge, skills, and/or ability required to succeed in the role.

• Experience of operating in, and supporting a sales environment, supporting the Sales teams by engaging in Technical requirements capture and defining of technical solution for a range of customers.
• Electrical, Mechanical, Network or Operational data centre experience is essential.
• Ability to present complex technical solutions in a simplified manner to articulate solutions and benefits to stakeholders with varying degrees of technical knowledge.
• Strong ability to focus ambiguous customer needs into specific, deliverable requirements.
• Experience of data centre design, business critical infrastructure management and data centre environment awareness.
• Ability to comprehend, analyse, and interpret complex project documents.
• A strong commitment to delivering excellent customer service to clients and co-workers.
• Ability to learn and apply technical and business concepts quickly.
• Required to coordinate and perform data centre site tours, providing technical information to the customer before, during and after the tour.
• Able to facilitate workshop style sessions with customers to extract important aspects of customer requirements. 
• Work well under pressure and take a proactive approach to unusual occurrences.
• Good organisational skills, attention to detail and openness to new ideas and procedures. 
• Proven Project Management experience being advantageous.
• Ability to clearly communicate solutions and the ability to present to audiences from all levels within an organisation is essential. 
• Effectively respond, verbally or in writing complex inquiries and customer complaints.
• Experience of using tools such as Salesforce, AutoCAD is beneficial.

Keys to Success:

To excel in this role, you will live and breathe data centres. It is highly preferred that you have an overall understanding of all the parts that make up a data centre, including components, technologies and services, together with business considerations, particularly pricing and market value. This will require that you track and manage many details while also grasping the big picture and how each detail fits into it.

In addition to this knowledge you will need exceptional customer-facing skills, including the ability to articulate proposed solutions and how Digital Realty pulls all the pieces together to deliver to customer expectations. At the same time, if the conversation during a customer tour goes into detail, you'll be able to "get granular" and respond to all but the most technical of questions.

During the sales lifecycle the Solutions Engineer will need to be able to respond to all technical questions and be able to simplify complex technical information in a succinct and easy to understand manner.

It is essential to have a flexible approach to working within the Sales team. Flexibility is a key requirement in this role as there will be times when you are required to work outside of the core working hours. There will also be some travel requirements, however mainly limited to mainland Europe.

Digital Realty: Where the cloud lives and business thrives:

At Digital Realty, we drive the digital ambitions of our customers by thinking globally, inspiring our customers, and doing our job with a sense of urgency.

We are a leading global provider of world-class data centre, colocation and interconnection solutions, supporting the digital ambitions of over 2,300 companies worldwide. We are where new technology is at home - the cloud, the Internet of Things or Artificial Intelligence. The way in which we humans communicate, work and think is increasingly changing - and here we play a central role.

What we can offer you

Our rapidly evolving business sector offers the opportunity to be part of a courageous and passionate team who work together to understand and meet the changing needs of our global customers. Join us and you’ll be part of a supportive and inclusive environment where you can bring your whole self to work. As part of our team, you’ll get to work with people from different business areas, challenge the way we do things and put your ideas into action. We’ll also give you plenty of development opportunities so you can build a rewarding and successful career with us. This is an exciting time to join our business so apply now and make your mark on our future.