Technical Sales 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 Technical Sales Engineer will be responsible for day-to-day interactions with prospective and existing customers who are looking to develop new product and service offerings with AHEAD. You’ll be architecting complex technology solutions for companies in streaming media, safety & security, cybersecurity, storage, flight simulation, medical, and other exciting industries. The majority of your time will be spent collaborating with the business development team, and you’ll play an integral role in growing our company's net new business.
We’re a progressive group of engineers that work on the bleeding edge of technology, providing solutions and services that are unmatched in the industry. Successful Technical Sales Engineers are autonomous problem solvers that continually learn and grow their skill set to meet the demands of our markets. 

Responsibilities

• Participate in technical discussions on discovery and proposal calls to collect the technical scope needed to move on to the quoting phase.
• Architect, design, and recommend custom & Tier 1 computer hardware configurations, identify best-matched services, and find solutions for potentially complex business requirements.
• Collaborate with our Business Development, Account Management, and Project Management teams in onboarding new accounts.
• Engage in solution selling hardware recommendations and services to key decision- makers and C-level executives.
• Build ongoing relationships with key technical contacts within our existing and prospective customers.
• Drive the creation of new tactical engineering offerings in terms of both products and services, and support engineering department initiatives.
• Build and develop relationships with key industry technology partners.
• Create hardware and service quotes, proposal highlights, and statements of work.
• Attend trade shows, technical conferences, and visit prospects with the sales team.
• Maintain awareness, knowledge, and skills in computer technology (e.g. hard drives, CPUs, GPUs, memory, and networking devices).
• Maintain awareness, knowledge, and skills of using computer operating systems and hypervisors.
• Occasionally lift computers that weigh up to 50 pounds. 

Requirements

• Solid knowledge of Tier 1 and white box system and server x86 hardware design.
• Working knowledge of computer architectures, hardware components, storage networking, rack builds, and various hardware industry standards.
• Experience designing and assembling a PC/server from scratch, after selecting all of the components for the build.
• Understand technical terms like RAID, NVMe, IPMI, IOPS, TPM, etc.
• Comfortable and skilled at building rapport with and maintaining solid customer relationships.
• Experience with both Linux and Windows operating systems and hypervisors; you enjoy regularly keeping yourself up to date with the newest releases.
• Strong curiosity for new ideas and a passion for learning new things.
• Excellent communication skills including written, verbal and face-to-face.
• Understanding of the global safety and EMC regulatory compliance requirements of computer hardware.
• Experience selling verification, design, and deployment services such as mechanical design, thermal testing, acoustic testing, and custom scripting.
• Proven experience understanding, gathering, and documenting customer requirements.
• Ability to travel up to 25% of the time.
• Bachelor's degree and/or 3-5+ years of related experience in a pre-sales technical role.

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 fo