Global Pre-Sales Engineering Manager

The Global Pre-Sales Engineering Manager leads Sunbird’s global team of Pre-Sales Engineers (Solutions Engineers), setting the standards, developing the talent, and directing the technical sales execution needed to help enterprise customers confidently select Sunbird’s Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software.  

This leader partners with Sales Leadership and regional sales teams to align technical resources with business priorities, improve technical win rates, and deliver consistent, effective discovery, demonstrations, and proof-of-concept engagements. The manager remains actively involved in strategic opportunities while building a team that can independently deliver strong customer outcomes.  

Working closely with Professional Services, Product Management, Customer Support, and Product Development, this role ensures that proposed solutions are technically sound, customer expectations are realistic, and commitments made during the sales cycle support successful implementation.  

Core Responsibilities  

Global Team Leadership and Development  
 

• Lead, coach, and develop the global Pre-Sales Engineering team across regions and time zones, establishing clear responsibilities, performance expectations, and accountability.  

• Conduct regular one-on-one meetings, performance reviews, and individual development planning; provide direct, actionable feedback on customer engagements and technical sales skills.  

• Lead recruiting, hiring, and onboarding; build team capabilities through structured training, peer learning, and opportunities to develop technical and leadership expertise.  

• Create a collaborative team culture that shares expertise across regions and delivers a consistent standard of customer engagement.  

Resource Planning and Sales Alignment  

• Partner with Sales Leadership and Regional Directors to prioritize opportunities and allocate SE resources based on qualification, complexity, strategic value, and workload.  

• Manage global coverage, capacity, and competing demands across discovery, demonstrations, POCs, RFPs, and partner engagements.  

• Establish clear engagement and escalation processes so sales teams know when and how to involve Pre-Sales Engineering.  

• Identify capacity constraints and skill gaps; recommend staffing, training, and coverage changes to support business growth.  

Technical Sales Execution and Strategic Opportunities  

• Establish and coach a discovery-first approach that connects customer business objectives, operational challenges, technical requirements, and success criteria before demonstrations or evaluations.  

• Ensure demonstrations are tailored to customer priorities and clearly communicate the value of Sunbird’s asset, capacity, change, power, environmental, connectivity, and digital twin capabilities.  

• Guide solution strategies, integration approaches, and technical win plans; review high-risk or complex proposals for feasibility and alignment with supported product capabilities.  

• Participate in strategic customer meetings, executive briefings, and competitive evaluations; serve as the senior technical sales escalation point.  

• Coach the team to translate complex technical concepts into business value for technical, operational, and executive audiences.  
  Proof of Concept Governance  

• Establish consistent POC qualification, scoping, success criteria, ownership, timelines, and customer responsibilities in partnership with Sales.  

• Review active POCs regularly, track progress against agreed objectives, and address technical blockers or resource conflicts.  

• Ensure evaluations have clear completion and decision points; prevent uncontrolled scope expansion and engagements without a defined path to a customer decision.  

• Maintain accurate technical evaluation records, risks, milestones, and outcomes in HubSpot CRM; use results to improve POC effectiveness and conversion.  
  RFP Quality and Sales to Services Transition  

• Oversee the quality, consistency, and timeliness of technical RFP, RFI, and security questionnaire responses; coordinate input and approvals from appropriate subject matter experts.  

• Maintain reusable, approved response content and ensure proposals accurately represent product capabilities and deployment requirements.  

• Establish effective handoffs to Professional Services, including validated requirements, high-level implementation scope, integrations, assumptions, and customer commitments.  

• Partner with Services and Support to identify recurring issues originating in the sales cycle and improve discovery, solution design, and expectation setting.  
  Enablement and Cross Functional Leadership  

• Own the team’s technical enablement plan, demonstration environments, reusable content, and readiness for new product releases.

• Coordinate training for Account Managers, BDRs, & ISR’s on technical discovery, product value, competitive positioning, and evaluation best practices.  

• Consolidate customer requirements, product gaps, and competitive intelligence into actionable feedback for Product Management and Sales Leadership without making unapproved roadmap commitments.  

• Represent Sunbird in selected customer events, webinars, conferences, and partner engagements; coordinate team participation with Sales and Marketing.  
  Success Measures  

• Success is assessed through team performance and the quality of technical sales execution, using agreed definitions and targets with Sales Leadership.  

• Technical win rate and POC conversion rate, including documented reasons for wins and losses.  

• Quality of discovery, customer-specific demonstrations, and technical solution recommendations.  

• Timely completion of technical evaluations and reduction of avoidable technical sales delays.  

• Customer confidence and satisfaction during the sales cycle, supported by effective Services handoffs.  

• Team development, onboarding effectiveness, product readiness, and consistent execution across regions.  

• Effective resource allocation, visibility into workload, and accurate HubSpot reporting.  

• Sales enablement effectiveness and productive cross-functional collaboration.  

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent professional experience.  

• At least seven years of enterprise software Sales Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, or related experience, including at least three years of direct people management in a technical customer-facing organization. 
  Required Qualifications  

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent professional experience.  

• At least seven years of enterprise software Sales Engineering, Solutions Engineering, Technical Consulting, or related experience, including at least three years of direct people management in a technical customer-facing organization. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead and develop geographically distributed teams supporting complex enterprise sales.  

• Strong experience in technical discovery, tailored demonstrations, POC management, solution design, and technical RFP responses.  

• Ability to connect technical capabilities to customer business outcomes and influence both technical and executive stakeholders.  

• Proven ability to prioritize resources, manage escalations, and establish repeatable processes without slowing sales execution.  

• Strong communication, coaching, analytical, and organizational skills; experience using CRM data to manage technical sales activities.  

• Ability to travel internationally and work across global time zones as required.  
  Preferred Experience  
  Experience with DCIM, data center operations, enterprise infrastructure, power and environmental monitoring, capacity planning, physical connectivity, or enterprise asset management. Familiarity with ServiceNow, CMDBs, ITSM systems, monitoring platforms, virtualization, and cloud infrastructure is highly desirable.  
  Experience leading global pre-sales teams, managing demonstration labs, and using HubSpot CRM is preferred.  
  Key Competencies  
  People leadership and coaching; consultative discovery; technical judgment; executive presence; commercial awareness; customer focus; resource prioritization; cross-functional influence; accountability; and the ability to communicate technical concepts in business terms.