Director of Engineering - Presales Architecture

HEARTLAND BUSINESS SYSTEMS LLC•West Des Moines, IA

About The Position

The Director of Engineering - Presales Architecture role is responsible for executing the technical presales vision of the organization under the leadership of the CTO. This role focuses exclusively on presales leadership, solution architecture, and sales enablement, and does not carry delivery execution or billable responsibilities. The role partners closely with Sales Leadership, Engineering, and Vendor Management to ensure consistent, scalable, and commercially viable solutions are positioned during the sales cycle. The goal of this role is to increase win rates, improve sales consistency, protect margin, and standardize architectures across customer segments.

Requirements

Accountability: Accountability looks at the extent to which an individual is willing to accept responsibility.
Adaptability: Adaptability looks at the extent to which an individual can fit into a changing working environment.
Business Acumen: Business acumen looks at the ability of the individual to understand and discriminate between various business related topics and issues. This includes insight into, and understanding of, specialized business concepts.
Coaching and Development: Coaching and development looks at the ability of an individual to provide guidance and feedback to help others strengthen specific knowledge/skill areas needed to accomplish a task or solve a problem.
Decision Making: Decision making skills look at the ability of the individual to select an effective course of action while controlling resources and expenditures.
Communication: Communication skills looks at the extent to which an individual communicates with economy and clarity to all levels of the organization, actively engaging in conversations in order to clearly understand others' message and intent, and receives and processes feedback.
Leadership: Leadership skills looks at how well the individual motivates and guides others to ensure performance in accordance with clear expectations and goals. It involves attracting, supporting, developing, and retaining a talented and diverse workforce.
Technical Aptitude: Technical aptitude looks at the ability of the individual to relate to topics which require an understanding or specialized knowledge.
3+ years in presales leadership, solutions architecture, or technical sales leadership.
7+ years in IT consulting, solutions architecture, or presales engineering.
Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
Strong experience designing infrastructure, cloud, and hybrid solutions.
Presales experience including discovery, solution design, estimation, and executive presentations.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading presales teams in a VAR or MSP environment.
Demonstrated impact on win rates, sales cycle efficiency, or margin protection.
Azure-based solution architecture experience.
Experience with HPE, Aruba, Cisco, VMware, and Veeam ecosystems.
Experience working with CRM and CPQ platforms in a presales context.

Responsibilities

Own the presales architecture strategy across infrastructure, cloud, and managed services offerings.
Develop and maintain standardized reference architectures, solution bundles, and presales design patterns.
Provide executive-level technical leadership for complex or strategic sales opportunities.
Partner with Sales leadership to improve sales process maturity, deal quality, and technical qualification.
Develop and deliver presales training for Sales Engineers, Architects, and Account Executives.
Participate in All-Hands Sales Calls (AHSC) and sales leadership forums.
Develop, integrate, and maintain presales tooling, templates, discovery frameworks, and estimation methodologies.
Maintain executive relationships with strategic vendors and partners.
Ensure presales solutions align with vendor programs, certifications, and go-to-market strategies.
Lead, coach, and develop presales architecture resources.
Participate in recruiting, hiring decisions, and internship programs related to presales roles.
Ensure clean and disciplined handoff from presales to delivery teams.
Validate that solutions sold align with delivery capabilities and margin expectations.
This role does not own delivery execution, staffing, utilization targets, or post-sale delivery accountability.