Consultant - Sales Engineer

As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena is committed to a people-first approach. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a flexible work environment that empowers individual growth, well-being, and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Must be based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, US.

The Ciena Global Cloud Networking (GCN) Account team is looking for a self-motivated, sociable, highly technical sales engineer to help support strategic GCN accounts as they continue to grow and deploy Ciena technology.

With a growing product portfolio, the current sales engineering team needs additional resources to support ongoing lab engagements, ever-growing install base and a wide variety of customer touch points. The candidate must have knowledge of all areas of telecommunications network architecture and engineering. This includes core backbone networks, datacenter and regional fabrics, datacenter and regional aggregation as well as edge/peering. Excellent communication skills and willingness to learn are critical for this role in order to be able to support customer contacts with skill levels ranging from PhD to technician.

This is a unique opportunity to be part of state-of-the art critical infrastructure buildouts at scale. Come join a dedicated, highly diverse and dynamic Sales Engineering team, where you will have the opportunity to leverage your strong technical background and technical consulting expertise to help customers understand and adopt Ciena technology through back-and-forth forums and lab engagement.

How You Will Contribute:

•       Technical expert providing on-going lab support to customer

•       Ciena’s optical transport portfolio SME providing on-going Engineering consulting support to customers (Waveserver, 6500-S, 6500-RLS and Coherent Pluggable modules)

•       Expert customer-facing point of contact for advanced technical collaboration conversations, focused primarily on software and APIs with the goal of enabling new product or software

•       Support bid responses, as well as technical presentations, demos, and proofs of concept throughout a sales cycle

•       Gather technical requirements, evaluate new product features requests, define Feature Requests and drive internal prioritization closely monitoring feature request lifecycle through implementation and field deployment

•       Provide continuous support with Product Defects Management, HW and SW Release Management, Quality Management

•       Engage on a regular basis with Ciena’s PLM & R&D organizations to communicate software solutions required to capture and maintain the business of Ciena’s GCN customers, with specific focus on next generation products and architectures, as well as incremental platform enhancements

•       Manage Engineering Action Item Register/Dashboard; present AIR to internal and external audiences

•       Provide emergency support with critical install base issues, product design issues and support customer root cause analysis technical communication

•       Customer advocate and internal liaison providing post sales emergency support to internal Professional Services organizations, Operations and Logistics teams

•       Support network design validation leveraging Ciena planning tools (PlannerPlus)

•       Support for customer question and answer forums (Workplace)

•       Technical Training support – course delivery and auditing

•       Provide support with Hardware and Services PO/Quote generation

•       Support the sales team with tracking customer specific activities through Salesforce while concurrently developing and building effective relationships with key customer stakeholders

•       Present account status updates weekly to broader sales team

•       Some travel required for training, off-site meetings as well as inter-company team building events 

The Must Haves:

•       Strong background in optical transport systems – L0/L1 expert and familiarity with IP & Ethernet (L2/L3) technologies

•       Strong hands-on experience with HW and SW configuration of transport network equipment is critical to provide ongoing lab support to customer – lab devices range from optical line systems, transponder platforms, coherent pluggable modules as well as routers/switches

•       Good understanding of network automation concepts, ZTP methods, DCN networking, APIs and networking models

•       Excellent verbal and written English Communication and presentation skills

•       Capture and articulate product feature requirements, epics and user stories

•       Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail

•       Time management and ability to plan, prioritize, execute & follow-up within a timely manner

•       Strategy development

•       Desire to learn

•       Programming skills are an asset (Python)

•       Excellent social skills due to dynamic nature of activities

•       Relationship skills and ability to inspire trust and influence others including senior Execs

•       Professionalism in attitude, conduct, and appearance

•       10+ years proven experience in the telecommunications industry with solution sales or technical consulting expertise focusing on DWDM technologies, DCI, Metro, regional and national long distance network design, required

•       Good knowledge of Ciena flagship product lines – 6500 S-series, 6500 RLS, Waveserver, Wavelogic Modems and Pluggable modules desirable

•       Knowledge of Ciena Routing and Switching portfolio desirable

•       Good understanding of Data Center architectures, spine and leaf designs, edge networking

•       Experience with 3rd party platforms (Arista, Nokia, Cisco, Juniper) is an asset

•       Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree (CS, EE), or equivalent experience, required

•       Sales Engineering and/or product support experience is an asset

The annual total target compensation pay range for this position in California is $195,600 - $312,300 USD.  This includes both base and incentive compensation.

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At Ciena, we are committed to building and fostering an environment in which our employees feel respected, valued, and heard.  Ciena values the diversity of its workforce and respects its employees as individuals. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.

Ciena is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.

If contacted in relation to a job opportunity, please advise Ciena of any accommodation measures you may require.