Director Solutions Engineering

Introduction

At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you'll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You'll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that's passionate about driving innovation and making a difference.

Your role and responsibilities

As Director of Presales / Solutions Engineering, India, you will lead presales Solutions Engineering organisation across India, providing strategic, technical, and people leadership to a high-performing team supporting a diverse portfolio of enterprise and digital-native customers.

This is a highly visible leadership role requiring strong executive presence, deep enterprise technology experience, and the ability to connect customer challenges with business and technical outcomes. You will partner closely with Sales, Customer Success, Product, Engineering, IBM teams, and the broader partner ecosystem to accelerate growth and strengthen Confluent’s position with customers across India.

Your Role and Responsibilities

• Lead and Develop the Solutions Engineering Organisation: Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of Solutions Engineers across India, fostering a culture of customer focus, technical excellence, collaboration, and accountability.
• Drive Presales Strategy and Execution: Own the technical presales strategy across the region, partnering with sales leadership to shape opportunities, improve technical win strategies, and drive business growth.
• Engage Executive Customers: Build credibility with senior business and technology leaders, translating complex customer challenges into compelling data-streaming and technology strategies.
• Lead Across Diverse Customer Segments: Support customers across digital-native, banking and financial services, government, large enterprise, and emerging business segments.
• Shape Technical Solutions: Guide teams in architecting solutions spanning real-time data streaming, cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments, data platforms, security, observability, automation, databases, and modern application architectures.
• Partner Across Functions: Collaborate closely with Sales, Customer Success, Product, Engineering, IBM, and partners to deliver integrated solutions and strong customer outcomes.
• Strengthen Technical Capability: Build a balanced organisation with expertise across cloud and on-premises environments, event streaming, data, security, workflow, databases, and emerging technologies.
• Drive Innovation and Best Practices: Establish scalable presales methodologies, technical standards, reusable practices, and continuous improvement across the Solutions Engineering organisation.
• Support Business Growth: Align technical strategy and resources with commercial priorities across both cloud-consumption and on-premises business.
• Represent Confluent in the Market: Act as a senior technical ambassador with customers, partners, industry forums, and executive stakeholders.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Leadership experience, with significant experience leading customer-facing technical, presales, Solutions Engineering, or consulting teams.
• Proven experience managing and developing high-performing technical teams in a complex enterprise technology environment.
• Strong background in enterprise software, cloud platforms, data infrastructure, or modern application architectures.
• Strong knowledge of one or more major cloud platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience supporting large, complex enterprise sales cycles and partnering effectively with senior sales leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to engage C-level and senior technology executives and translate technical capabilities into measurable business outcomes.
• Strong understanding of enterprise architecture across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.
• Excellent leadership, communication, presentation, influencing, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Strong strategic and analytical capability, with demonstrated success solving complex customer and business problems.
• Experience operating across geographically distributed teams and diverse customer segments.

Ability and willingness to travel across India as required, with occasional international travel

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience within data streaming, data platforms, cloud infrastructure, observability, cybersecurity, automation, databases, or adjacent enterprise technologies.
• Knowledge of Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Confluent Cloud, event-driven architectures, or real-time data streaming.
• Exposure to data and AI architectures, including how trusted real-time data can support AI applications, agents, analytics, and modern data platforms.
• Experience collaborating within a broader ecosystem of global systems integrators, technology partners, and cloud providers.
• Experience building new capabilities, practices, or centres of excellence from the ground up.

Years of Experience:
10 - 20

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM has a global presence, operating in more than 175 countries with a broad-based geographic distribution of revenue. The company’s Global Markets organization is a strategic sales business unit that manages IBM’s global footprint, working closely with dedicated country-based operating units to serve clients locally. These country teams have client relationship managers who lead integrated teams of consultants, solution specialists and delivery professionals to enable clients’ growth and innovation. By complementing local expertise with global experience and digital capabilities, IBM builds deep and broad-based client relationships. This local management focus fosters speed in supporting clients, addressing new markets and making investments in emerging opportunities. Additionally, the Global Markets organization serves clients with expertise in their industry as well as through the products and services that IBM and partners supply. IBM is also expanding its reach to new and existing clients through digital marketplaces.

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Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

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ABOUT IBM

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