Director, Solutions Strategy

Solution Strategy & Pre-Sales

• Design enterprise-grade technology solutions for new initiatives and business opportunities.

• Define solution scope, capacity, and high-level estimates in collaboration with Product, Design, Engineering, Data, and other relevant disciplines and teams.

• Present and articulate technology solutions, trade-offs, and recommendations to client stakeholders — including where we recommend against something.

• Lead technology and vendor assessments, and act as a key voice in buy-vs.-build decisions.

• Engage the technology partner ecosystem when defining solutions, bringing partner capability to bear on the client's actual problem rather than the reverse.

• Ensure proposed solutions balance business objectives, technical feasibility, scalability, delivery realities, and long-term client strategy.

• Contribute materially to pipeline quality and win rate on the opportunities you shape.

Client & Technology Leadership

• Own and develop relationships with the client's technology leadership and management teams as a trusted advisor.

• Understand the client's business and technology landscape well enough to identify credible opportunities for growth and expansion within existing accounts.

• Be accountable for the overall direction and coherence of the Technology and Strategy work within your engagements.

• Provide strategic direction to project delivery teams, and collaborate with other Senior Leaders across engagements.

• Act as a key member of the account team alongside leaders from other disciplines.

• Connect technology strategy, delivery execution, and account growth into long-term client partnerships.

Craft & Capability

• Own and evolve how Apply approaches solutioning: reusable solution patterns, estimating and scoping models, assessment frameworks, and the standard of quality we hold proposals to.

• Raise the floor on solution quality across engagements you are not personally staffed on, through review, guidance, and shared standards.

Experience

• At least 10 years working in and around enterprise IT environments.

• A blend of consulting and enterprise-side experience.

• Substantial client-facing experience, including gaining the confidence of senior stakeholders.

• A track record on complex solutions involving multiple systems, vendors, and stakeholders.

• Experience mentoring senior technologists and strategists, and influencing teams you do not manage.


Technical breadth

• A genuine technologist — strong understanding of web, mobile, and cloud technologies. A jack of all trades.

• Cloud and DevOps (AWS, Azure, GCP) — you have architected cloud solutions, or worked closely on projects deployed to the cloud.

• Data storage and transformation (RDBMS, NoSQL, big data / warehousing).

• API standards and integration patterns (REST, GraphQL).

• Familiarity with UX and single-page application frameworks.

• Familiarity with MACH architecture and the broader evolution of enterprise systems — including 'monolith to composable' thinking and the realities of getting there.

• Strong understanding of headless and service-oriented platforms.

• Wide exposure across the digital ecosystem: CMS, commerce and loyalty, CRM, marketing automation, personalization and testing, search and SEO, content marketing, social, mobile.

• Understanding of the regulatory and compliance requirements of enterprise solutions.

• Exposure to service design and business design practices.

• An appreciation of how upstream strategy and downstream enablement depend on each other.


How you work

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills — you can distill messy information into a thoughtful, defensible recommendation.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to make complex technical concepts legible to a non-technical audience.

• Strong presentation and public speaking skills.

• The ability to align and influence critical stakeholders without positional authority.

• Comfort with ambiguity, and the judgment to know when to resolve it and when to name it.

• Ability to travel as needed for client meetings and business development.