Lead Application Engineer

Summary / Role Purpose

As Ansys Lead Application Engineer, you will work with a variety of customers in your application area of cloud/HPC Simulation vertical deployment and become a credible advisor for improving your customers' product development.

You will lead technical efforts in vertical application deployment, focusing on the scalability, robustness and performance of our developed solutions. Working at the intersection of IT infrastructure and development, you will play a  role in shaping the success of deploying our technology in real-world environments in various industries and guide other team members in scaling our solutions.

This includes owning the design and execution of stress tests, refining deployment templates, and establishing best practices for containerization, Kubernetes orchestration, and CI/CD integration. Your leadership will ensure that our solutions are production-ready and can scale with confidence across diverse IT environments.

You will lead technical sales support activities and work with sales leaders to plan our go-to-market strategy for selected customers. You will scope or lead the delivery of professional services projects, provide customer consulting and help translate customer requirements into new product features.

You will take the lead in multidisciplinary teams to develop end-to-end simulation solutions and help expand our application areas and industry knowledge. By sharing your knowledge and experience within Ansys teams and with customers, you will enhance your reputation and become a sought-after person in your field of application.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide proactive and results-oriented leadership in the planning, coordination and execution of all technical activities throughout the lifecycle of a sales opportunity, such as technical discovery, negotiation of technical success criteria, product presentations, demonstrations and evaluations. Works independently, responsibly, across teams and organizations.

• Collaborate with Sales to drive the most competitive technical assignments to successful outcomes by leveraging your recognized thought leadership and expertise in the relevant application area.

• Interact with customers to understand their key business initiatives, product development needs and design workflows; analyze how Ansys products and platforms can meet and exceed the customer's goals and improve their key performance indicators; communicate the Ansys value proposition to senior management.

• Leading project teams to develop differentiated but reusable simulation solutions using the Ansys platform and products, deploying these solutions in customers’ design workflows.

• Support for knowledge sharing and mentoring programs within Ansys.

• Work with Ansys product development teams to define the Ansys product roadmap; lead project teams testing new versions of Ansys products on industrial problems, develop best practices for applications.

• Demonstrate leadership and active engagement in Ansys initiatives to innovate offerings and solutions, improve technology and productivity, and develop people.

• Support the Ansys Field and Digital Marketing team by developing promotional materials and supporting events as well as writing and delivering conference presentations.

• Leading the delivery of professional services, providing customer consulting.

• Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of scalable, secure, and high-performing deployment architectures using Kubernetes and container technologies, including conducting performance and scalability testing of vertical applications and proactively identifying and resolving system bottlenecks.

• Contribute to architecture decisions and strategic planning, ensuring our deployment frameworks and platform scalability align with emerging trends and advancements in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and deployment automation.

Minimum Education/Certification Requirements and Experience

• Required education and degree type: BS or MS or PhD in Mechanical/Chemical/Aerospace/Electrical Engineering or related field
• Required minimum years of professional experience in an engineering software environment: BS+8, MS+6, or PhD+3
• Demonstrated use of relevant Ansys software or knowledge of other commercial CAE, CAD, EDA, PLM software packages
• Subject matter expert in one or more relevant disciplines within Ansys’ business and is/will be sought out for advice by other Ansys engineers
• Demonstrated understanding of engineering practices and product development, experience with building solutions using simulation technology and deploying those solutions within customers’ engineering workflows
• Track record of delivering exceptional customer outcomes and revenue impact
• Strong leadership and mentoring skills
• Logical problem-solving, strong interpersonal and communication skills, fluent in writing and speaking English
• Ability to organize and manage multiple projects which are complex in nature, possesses a sense of urgency
• Projects a professional image and demonstrates business acumen, driven to succeed
• Ability to travel domestically up to 25% of time
• Proven experience (5+ years) in leading application deployments in production environments.
• Expertise with Kubernetes and container orchestration in large-scale deployments
• Expertise with multiple DevOps pipelines tools (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) and Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Pulumi)
• Proficiency in performance testing, scalability analysis, and tuning of distributed systems
• Experience with monitoring and observability stacks (Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
• Solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and hybrid/multi-cloud architectures
• Proficient in Python scripting, particularly using simulation software APIs and associated simulation related automation tools

Preferred Qualifications and Skills

• Preferred education and years of professional experience in an engineering software environment: BS+12, MS+10, or PhD+7
• 4 years of experience in application engineering, customer support, or consulting services type customer facing roles using engineering software
• Ability to interact effectively with senior business managers and C-level executives
• Ability to travel domestically up to 50% of time
• Basic understanding of programming languages such as: C# (.NET), Javascript, HTML,
• Practical knowledge of agility and agile project management

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