AI & Cloud Platforms Specialist Solutions Engineer

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.   At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD.    We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived.    We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD. The compensation range indicated in this posting reflects the On-Target Earnings (“OTE”) for this role, which includes a base salary and any applicable target bonus amount. This OTE range may vary based on the candidate’s relevant experience, qualifications, and geographic location.     Why AHEAD:   Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.   We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.   USA Employment Benefits include:  - Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance  - 401(k)  - Paid company holidays  - Paid time off  - Paid parental and caregiver leave  - Plus more! See benefits https://www.aheadbenefits.com/ for additional details.    Use of AI: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, assessing responses, or to capture recordings and create transcriptions or summaries during interviews. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans.   If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please refer to the Candidate Privacy Notice or contact us at privacy@ahead.com.    You may opt-out of the review or analysis of your application and resume by AI tools by using the General Application. Please include the role you wish to apply for in the Additional Information field. You may also choose to opt-out of recording and transcription at any time, including after joining an interview.  Candidates will not be penalized for choosing to opt-out.

Responsibilities

Engages in conversations with customers to understand their business challenges and introduce AHEAD and AHEAD’s AI & Cloud Platforms capabilities to qualify opportunities.

Initiates conversations with customers specifically focused around Data, AI, Platform Engineering, Cloud, and Modern Applications in collaboration with vendors and the AHEAD services organization.

Identify gaps in the client environment, process, and skills with the intent to address, educate, and bring their teams together to drive client enablement

Explain and educate complex solutions, architectures ,and integrations in a clear and articulate manner

Creates guiding examples of customer transformation through seminars, workshops, webinars, and direct engagement.

Collaborates with team members to discover new opportunities. Drives incremental revenue growth through personal campaigns (e.g., portfolio analysis) or internal sources (e.g., Marketing). Collaborates with account teams, partners, or services to track and qualify new opportunities.

Identifies customer business needs and technology readiness. Contributes to the development of solutions in collaboration with internal teams, partners, and services. Proposes prioritized solutions that align with customers' needs. Articulates the business value of proposed solutions.

Collaborates with other teams (e.g., account teams) to build pipeline. Interfaces with customers and builds relationships via social selling. Apply AHEAD’s sales process to adequately qualify an opportunity.

Identifies opportunities to drive consumption and grow business with existing customers by initiating conversations, providing demos or quotes, and collaborating with partners or internal teams.

Proactively engage with Cloud vendors to leverage funding mechanisms available as part of sales campaign.

Proactively builds external stakeholders' mapping. Collaborates with account teams (e.g., Account Executives) to identify and engage senior business subject matter decision makers at the customer's/partner's business.

Implements strategies to accelerate the closing of deals. Contributes input on strategies to drive and close prioritized opportunities. Implements close plans (e.g., how to map timeline, engage the customer, get customer buy-in and commitment) to de-risk and drive predictable deal closure.

Technical Expertise

Leads conversations and sets up events within Microsoft, AWS, Harness, Kong, Cognitions, Red Hat, Snowflake, Databricks and other partners.

Initiates conversations with prospective customers/partners at events to expand external network.

Proactively provides analysis of the competitive landscape in supported solution area. Evaluates opportunities and makes recommendations on pursuit or withdrawal. Provide the holistic value of Ahead to customers as it pertains to the Modern Apps, Data, DevOps, and Cloud Platforms.

Maintain a 101 level competency and certification level in core technology areas across AWS (AWS SA Associate Certification) & Microsoft Azure (e.g. AZ-104 Azure Administrator)

Sales Excellence

Collaborates with partners and resources and leverages customer insights or industry knowledge. Contributes to exploring business and emerging opportunities to optimize the portfolio and support customer innovation.

Reviews feedback report and coaches others on ensuring customer/partner satisfaction and decreasing dissatisfaction by establishing recovery action plans to improve clients' overall experience. Manages and/or orchestrates sales and delivery success through the account team and pursuit team.

Engages with internal and external stakeholders on business planning.

Collaborates with extended sales team, partners, and marketing to conduct business analysis (e.g., whitespace analysis, identify industry trends) to pursue high-potential customers and develop a target list of potential business.

Manages the end-to-end business of the assigned territory. Conducts forecasting for accounts and develops a portfolio and territory plan to drive intentional selling aligned with strategic priorities.

Completes required training and obtains relevant product and role certifications aligned to the role and workload/industry.

Requirements

Bachelor-level degree in engineering, IT, data communications, Information Systems, computer science, or equivalent educational or professional experience and/or qualifications

7-10 Years Experience in multiple of the following areas:

Experience with Public Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and On-Premises Environments

Experience with Modern Data Platforms

Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) from major providers (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Azure OpenAI & Copilot, Amazon Bedrock & Amazon Nova, Llama-family models)

Knowledge of generative AI patterns like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

Knowledge of Agentic AI and multi-agent systems

Hands-on experience in Automation, Orchestration and CI/CD pipelines (SCM, Build, Deployment, Code Quality, APM, Monitoring and Reporting tools).

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) experience (E.g. scripting Terraform, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Rundeck, Shell)

Key Skills

Strong interpersonal skills are required. Ability to work effectively with team members, clients and other areas of the IT environment

Strong written and oral communications

Excellent problem-solving abilities, strong decision-making skills and make sound judgment decisions.

Excellent presentation skills.

Ability To

Work effectively with team members, clients, and other areas of IT

Handle multiple tasks and be flexible in a fast-paced environment

Deliver on time