Regional Sales Director - Confluent

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. What You’ll Do ● Set the vision, strategy, and priorities for Confluent’s Heartland Enterprise region, translating company and GTM priorities into a clear plan for growth and execution. ● Lead, inspire, and develop a high-performing team of Enterprise Account Executives, creating a culture of accountability, collaboration, customer focus, and consistent execution. ● Develop and execute a comprehensive regional business plan focused on driving new business, expanding strategic customer relationships, and accelerating adoption and consumption of Confluent’s data streaming platform. ● Own the operating rhythm and performance of the region, including pipeline generation, forecasting accuracy, territory and account planning, deal execution, and achievement of revenue and consumption targets. ● Drive a strong consumption mindset across the team, ensuring sellers are focused not only on closing business, but also on accelerating customer adoption, expanding use cases, and driving sustainable growth over time. ● Partner closely with Solutions Engineering, Customer Success, Marketing, Partners, and Professional Services to identify new workloads and use cases, remove barriers to adoption, and accelerate customer consumption and expansion. ● Build deep relationships with senior executives and key decision-makers across strategic enterprise accounts, positioning Confluent as a critical technology partner for their broader data, cloud, and AI strategies. ● Attract, hire, coach, and develop top sales talent, building a strong and diverse talent pipeline and creating meaningful development opportunities across the team. ● Develop and leverage Confluent’s partner ecosystem, including cloud providers, technology partners, and system integrators, to expand our reach and accelerate customer outcomes. ● Maintain strong operational command of the business, proactively identifying risks and opportunities and taking decisive action to drive performance. ● Collaborate closely with peer sales leaders across AMER and the broader GTM organization, sharing best practices and contributing to Confluent’s overall enterprise strategy. ● Lead effectively through change and ambiguity as Confluent continues to evolve and scale as an IBM company. ● 10+ years of successful enterprise technology sales experience, including significant experience leading high-performing enterprise sales teams. ● Proven success selling complex SaaS, cloud, data infrastructure, database, analytics, AI, or enterprise platform solutions. Experience with data streaming, event-driven architecture, or adjacent technologies is highly valued. ● A strong track record of leading teams to exceed revenue and consumption targets while driving predictable, sustainable growth. ● Experience building and executing regional sales strategies that balance new business acquisition with customer adoption, consumption, expansion, and retention. ● Demonstrated success navigating and closing complex, multi-million-dollar, multi-year enterprise agreements with large strategic customers. ● Strong understanding of enterprise technology buying motions, with experience building multi-threaded relationships across technical, business, and executive stakeholders. ● Strong business and operational acumen, with the ability to manage pipeline, forecasting, territory strategy, account planning, and performance with a high degree of rigor. ● Demonstrated ability to attract, coach, and develop high-performing enterprise sellers and build an inclusive, high-performance team culture. ● Strong executive presence and credibility, with experience engaging C-suite and senior technology leaders and connecting technical capabilities to strategic business outcomes. ● Ability to operate effectively within a highly matrixed organization and influence cross-functional teams without direct authority. ● Excellent communication, presentation, negotiation, and decision-making skills, with the ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving and evolving environment. ● Willingness and ability to travel to engage customers, partners, and teams across the region. United States Sales Remote Professional No City, US (0147) International Business Machines Corporation