Senior Solutions Architect II, Pre-Sales, Middle East and North Africa

Role Overview

Senior Solutions Architect II, Pre-Sales, Middle East and North Africa at Planet. This is a full-time, remote position based in the United Arab Emirates.

Company Overview

Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. The company delivers an unprecedented dataset of empirical information via a cloud-based platform to authoritative figures in commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. Planet is both a space company and a data company, controlling every component of hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software engineering. The company is global with employees working remotely worldwide and joining from offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and The Netherlands.

Role Purpose

As a Senior Pre-Sales Engineer, you will demonstrate the value of Planet's solutions to help organizations within the Middle East and North Africa region overcome their earth data challenges. You will collaborate with internal cross-functional teams including Customer Success, Product Management, and Business Development to act as the voice of the customer and enhance Planet's industry offerings.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Engagement & Discovery

• Use consultative techniques to uncover customers' pain points and business needs within their current or intended processes and ways of working.
• Quantify why these needs are important to the customer.
• Create solid relationships with customers' technical and management staff as a trusted advisor to their business.
• Act as an advisor to the customer to recommend solutions that fit their business challenges and bring measurable value.
• Ability to present to key executive Government stakeholders within the MENA Region.
• Ability to run workshops or training sessions with users.

Solution Delivery & Demonstration

• Build and deliver presentations and solution demonstrations highlighting technical capabilities of Planet's platform related to addressing the customer's business needs and pain points.
• Communicate the value that these solutions can bring to the customer's business.

Proposal & Tender Support

• Assist with the response to tenders, RFIs and RFPs with respect to product and solution information.
• Collaborate with internal cross-functional teams including Customer Success, Product Management, and Business Development to assist with RFP and RFI preparation and submissions.

Sales Strategy & Execution

• Work with your sales team colleagues to determine account development plans and execute a strategy to engage customers and prospects.
• Attain quarterly and annual sales and operational objectives assigned by management.

Reporting & Leadership Communication

• Represent perspectives to Sales leadership in communicating forecasts, pipeline opportunities, deal reviews, data in CRM tools, and customer feedback.

Team Development

• Act as a mentor to team members and lead training to drive their development.

Qualifications & Experience

• 10+ years of experience working with governments and commercial industry communities in Earth Observation within the Middle East region.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field.
• Experience working with GIS and Remote Sensing.
• Experience in IMINT, ISR, and related fields.
• Experience writing technical proposals for government tenders.
• Experience of value-based solution selling and/or consulting selling techniques.

Skills & Competencies

• Fluency in Arabic and professional working proficiency in English.
• Experience with QGIS, SocetGXP, ArcGIS, GDAL and other common geospatial software packages.
• Ability to successfully communicate and coordinate with international customers and sales team.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and proactive working style.
• Ability to multitask, prioritize and manage time effectively.
• Ability to program with Python to process imagery, manipulate vector data, interact with APIs and build data pipelines.
• Solid self-leadership and ability to lead customer engagements.

Additional Information

Travel & Location

• Frequent international travel up to 50%, primarily around the MENA region, but also to Europe and the United States.
• If located near an office, you are expected to work from that office 3 days per week.

Compensation & Benefits

• This role is eligible to receive commission.
• Paid time off including vacation, holidays and company-wide days off.
• Employee Wellness Program.
• Home Office Reimbursement.
• Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement.
• Tuition Reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Equity.
• Volunteering Paid Time Off.