UK Storage Presales

UK Storage Presales

This role has been designed as 'Hybrid' with a requirement that you will work on average 2 days per week from an HPE office.

Who We Are:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the global edge-to-cloud company advancing the way people live and work. We help companies connect, protect, analyze, and act on their data and applications wherever they live, from edge to cloud, so they can turn insights into outcomes at the speed required to thrive in today’s complex world. Our culture thrives on finding new and better ways to accelerate what’s next. We know varied backgrounds are valued and succeed here. We have the flexibility to manage our work and personal needs. We make bold moves, together, and are a force for good. If you are looking to stretch and grow your career our culture will embrace you. Open up opportunities with HPE.

Job Description:

Storage Presales Technical Architect:

We are looking for our next Storage Presales Architect to join the growing Data Solutions team supporting HPE's UK Commercial business.

This is a high energy, customer facing role within a fast paced, high velocity segment of the business. The successful candidate will work closely with account teams, specialists, and partners to progress opportunities, accelerate customer outcomes, and drive growth across the UK Commercial business. We are looking for someone who brings enthusiasm, initiative, and a strong sense of ownership, thriving in an environment where they can influence multiple stakeholders and make a tangible impact.

The ideal candidate will possess strong expertise across:

• •Enterprise storage and data infrastructure solutions
• •Private cloud and hybrid cloud architectures
• •Virtualisation platforms and modern workload environments
• •Unstructured and structured data platforms
• •Data protection, cyber resilience, backup, and disaster recovery
• •Hyperconverged and software-defined infrastructure

Combining technical credibility with strong consultative selling skills, the successful candidate will be able to translate customer challenges into business focused outcomes. They will be a confident communicator and presenter, passionate about technology, and skilled at building trusted relationships with customers, partners, and colleagues to deliver the right solution every time.

Responsibilities:

• •Applies advanced knowledge of the company's portfolio, articulating proposals, and ensuring customer's business and technical needs are being met.
• •Identifies key risks to ensure the customer's business and technical requirements are met, detailing key value points for the rest of the account team.
• •Provides input to address key end-customer IT trends, requirements, gaps, or unmet needs.
• •Translates the functional design of a solution into a technical design and architecture that can be scaled to accommodate growth.
• •Communicates how the solution value proposition addresses customer business needs.
• •Tracks industry trends and emerging technologies (as well as competitor offerings and activities) leveraging this knowledge with the customer’s technical environment.
• •Shows customers how to migrate and/or integrate technologies in new or existing environments.
• •Contributes to industry developments through contributions (content support, presentations, demos, booth support) at conferences, industry events, and utilizing social media.
• •Designs and delivers solutions aligned to customer's business requirements, leveraging knowledge of the industry and the customer's technical environment.
• •Participates in deep-dive discussions and ability to articulate the value proposition, define key differentiators, and draft high-level solution designs.
• •Delivers optimal results, balancing costs, scope, scale, and benefits to deliver superior value.
• •Participates in the account's business planning processes.
• •Collaborates proactively with account team leadership (HPE and Partners) to develop and communicate key value propositions, negotiation points, and identify overlooked opportunities within assigned accounts; uses expertise to lead the creation of complex solutions.
• •Successfully maps the right partner to an opportunity and transfers knowledge to external partners, delivering effective results to the customer.
• •Proactively build the pipeline by identifying opportunities (e.g., enhancements, unmet or unrecognized needs, up-selling, and cross-selling opportunities) within the account.
• •Monitors the account pipeline and nurtures active deals from the opportunity to close.
• •Actively participates in sales forecast meetings and provides feedback to accelerate the sales lifecycle.
• •Documents ongoing work (activities, tasks) throughout the sales cycle using specific tools and resources and sharing best practices with peers and partners to collaborate more effectively.
• •Develops and nurtures professional working relationships with the customer technical teams and with key executives, based on an understanding of the customer's ecosystem, business needs, and how HPE can deliver value and business outcomes.
• •Proactively shares knowledge with peers and helps develop more junior team members.

Education and Experience:

• •First-level university technical degree or equivalent technical qualifications. Advanced degree in technology preferred.
• •4–8 years of technical experience in IT with a focus on technical consulting and solution selling.
• •Knowledge-based and experienced-based relevant industry certifications are strongly preferred.

Knowledge and Skills:

• •Well-developed experience participating in solution configurations and the creation of demos and proofs-of-concept (POC) to meet customer requirements.
• •Well-developed understanding of company solution offerings and portfolio of products (and their application with strategic customers or industries), software, services, and how they can be combined to address customer needs.
• •Well-developed, strong working knowledge with the as-a-service (aaS) business model, business value, complete ecosystem, and outcomes that drive aaS strategic goals within own domain.
• •Well-developed written and verbal communication skills, including active listening and storytelling, and ability to communicate in English and applicable local languages (both in-person and virtual) as needed to perform job requirements.
• •Demonstrates well-developed discussion and persuasion skills used to support the company point-of-view, while respectfully questioning and challenging proposed solutions.
• •Well-developed business and financial acumen—sales cycle, pipeline growth, reporting, ability to influence, business strategy linkage—with an understanding of functional responsibilities of various customer business roles.
• •Understanding of typical KPIs is important to CxOs and line-of-business (LOB) executives; knowledgeable about TCO/ROI concepts and calculations, financial models, and understanding how customers generate revenue.
• •Well-developed consultative and value selling skills, including whiteboarding, objection handling, and closing skills to proactively help customers make business decisions.
• •Well-developed company business knowledge, technical tools, standard customer relationship management (CRM) systems and tools.
• •Well-developed resource management skills, including how and when to effectively engage SMEs/specialists.
• •Hands on experience with one or more products, solutions, tools, or services aligned to respective job responsibility.
• •Ability to design and develop a playbook for demonstrations or walk throughs of products, solutions, tools, or service.
• •Ability to deliver live demonstrations or walk throughs of products, solutions, tools, or services to customers, partners, and other stakeholders.
• •Well-developed project and time management skills or experience, with excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, including appropriate due diligence.
• •Well-developed knowledge of partners' offerings and how to effectiv