Senior Presales Architect (Apps)

Rackspace Technology is a leading provider of expertise and managed services across all the major public and private cloud technologies. We’ve evolved Fanatical Support to encompass the entire customer journey — providing Fanatical Experience™ from first consultation to daily operations. Our passionate experts combine the power of proactive, always-on service and expertise with best-in-class tools and automation to deliver technology when and how our customers need it.

We’re looking for a Senior Solutions (Presales) Architect for the Application Services team. This is a specialty domain role that applies expert knowledge of solutioning principles and technology to select sales opportunities. The candidate will be regarded as an expert inside of Rackspace in an Application Services solutioning team.

Works in close collaboration with the sales, solutions and delivery team to design specific and innovative Application Services components related to the customers, application development, modernisation and other transformative initiatives. This will often be part of a wider end-to-end solution including platform design, managed services, security, data/AI. Additionally, the role leads internal efforts to build credibility within specific technologies as they apply to Cloud Native Development Services.

The role is UK based, however will work with global Rackspace team focusing on delivering solutions to new and existing customers within the EMEA region.

Discover your inner Racker - click here!

Responsibilities:

• Develop deep professional relationships with clients and act as a trusted business and technical advisor for client executives. Well versed in related topics with the ability to navigate complex negotiations.
• Exercise strong judgement in selecting methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
• Determine methods and procedures on new assignments with minimal to no instruction. You will influence beyond your personal role and lead pre-sales projects with impact across multiple Rackspace teams including but not limited to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Product Management and Solutions and Sales.
• Lead customer workshops to educate on specific technologies and concepts.
• Work on complex problems of diverse scope, evaluate customer needs and provide direction on technical and transformational concepts that solve for current and future challenges.
• Writes formal project proposals, responds to RFIs, RFPs and bids, and statements of work that capture the customer’s requirements, propose innovative solutions that meet their business and technical objectives and estimate the effort required to execute projects aimed at specific goals and target outcomes.
• Supplemental resource on highly specialised customer engagements that require advanced guidance on specific technologies or concepts related to application development related project-based outcomes.
• Recognise buying signs, compelling events, and decision makers.
• Foresees potential technical and business customer objections early in the sales cycle.
• Overcomes concerns and lowers customer risk to selecting Rackspace.
• Act as a trusted advisor, with deep understanding of the customer's business, uncovering both overt and latent pains specific to your domaine expertise.
• Determine the level of effort for project tasks within applicable methodologies, i.e. Agile or Waterfall project management.
• Become recognised within Rackspace for your extensive technical knowledge within a specific domain (Application Modernisation, DevOps).
• Build and maintains deep and focused knowledge on products and services within their specialty domain including expertise that extends beyond the Rackspace portfolio.
• Responsible for associated activities such as capturing notes and activities in Salesforce and assisting in managing deal pipeline.
• Elevate the rest of the solutions team in their area of expertise, providing guidance, expertise, and mentoring to junior/peer-level colleagues.

Qualifications:

• Full understanding of the tools of the solutioning trade (Salesforce, Proposal Tools, Project Scoping and Technology Tools).
• Ability to prioritise deals, training, and initiatives through highly effective time management.
• Experienced professional using best practices and knowledge of internal or external business issues to improve products or services.
• Strong understanding of modernising legacy applications into modern applications via methodologies such as rehosting, re-platforming, serverless or container adoption.
• Solid understanding of the processes, procedures and systems used to accomplish the work and in-depth familiarity with the broader underlying concepts in own job family/job discipline.
• Strong understanding of developing cloud native modern applications and software development practices, with exposure to any language (Java, C#, Node.js, Scala, Python or GO preferred)
• Maintains an in-depth knowledge of one or more Cloud Hyperscaler (i.e. AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Knowledge of building containerised applications and systems on modern container orchestration platforms.
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines with respect to serverless and container application preferred.
• Track record of success working through technical challenges requiring specialty knowledge within enterprise organisations.
• Track record of success dealing with ambiguity (internal and external) and working collaboratively with other departments and organisations to solve challenging problems.
• Advanced knowledge and thought leadership on technology and industry trends that affect development decisions for enterprise organisations.
• Demonstrates knowledge of complex designs of engineering assemblies and sub-assemblies, process, layouts, and schematics; familiar with development of product test methods.
• Excellent attention to detail, communication skills (written and verbal), interpersonal skills, problem solving, analytical, presentation, and whiteboarding skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or Business required or close to 10+ years of working experience in a similar capacity in a technical presales or delivery capacity.
• At least ONE industry certification in AWS, Azure or GCP.

#LI-LP2

#LI-Remote