Services Pre Sales Lead

At Finastra, we’re a global leader in financial services software, dedicated to expanding access to financial services and shaping what’s next for the industry. Our technology powers mission‑critical solutions across Lending, Payments and Universal Banking, supporting over 7,000 customers, including 80% of the world’s top 50 banks, in more than 110 countries.

Services Pre Sales Lead/ Services Deal Solution Manager

About Finastra

Finastra is one of the world’s leading financial software companies, serving customers worldwide, including 80% of the top 50 global banks. Formed through the combination of Misys and D+H, the company delivers secure, reliable, cloud‑ready solutions across retail banking, lending, and payments.

Our open culture and values—Put Customers First, Foster Collaboration, Be Open, Ignite Innovation, and Take Ownership—shape how we work and how we innovate finance together.

Finastra is committed to building an inclusive environment where employees bring their whole selves to work, collaborate with trust, and make their mark through creativity and accountability.

Role Overview

As a Services Pre Sales Lead at Finastra, you play a critical role at the intersection of pre-sales solutioning and delivery readiness. The goal is to win deals that we can deliver profitably and predictably. Your work ensures that what we propose to customers is both strategically aligned to their needs and executable by our delivery teams—supporting our mission to innovate finance together

Responsibilities

• Engage with Sales teams and prospective clients to understand business challenges and technical requirements across banking, payments and lending —core focus areas of Finastra’s portfolio.

• Validate solution assumptions and suggest services solution approach aligning with Finastra’s software architecture and ecosystem.

• Collaborate internally across Product and Delivery organization to ensure solution accuracy, feasibility and alignment to customer requirements.

• Work closely with Pre-sales team to run scope decomposition to build defensible services estimates (effort, cost, timeline).

• Present proposed solutions and SOW to customer stakeholders, articulating value proposition, defending estimations, elaborating delivery approach and execution strength.

• Build predictable and reasonable estimation methods including analogous past project comparables, parametric covering effort per product, customer type, volumes, etc and or bottoms-up approach to estimate at task level, for services scope.

• Lead internal review sessions with senior management to facilitate necessary approvals on estimates

• Produce indicative project plans with milestones, critical path, resourcing model, and contingency.

• Identify risks in scoping, delivery, estimation models ensuring mitigating strategies are suggested and aligned across all stakeholders and captured in the documents needed.

• Draft SOW documents (including scope, delivery method, deliverables, acceptance, roles/RACI, governance, change control).

• Facilitate SOW review and sign-off across various stakeholders in the organization while maintaining tight control of document version, changes and format. 

• Coordinate partner workshares; integrate estimates; define quality gates and governance.

• Maintain basis-of-estimate, assumptions, and RAID; ensure InfoSec/compliance inputs are addressed.

• Run workshops internally including Sales, Product, Engineering, Support, Legal, and Finance to finalize proposals.

• Continuously refine estimation models using actuals and retrospectives.

• Work closely with sales and pre-sales team to manage deal timelines, intake process for estimation and necessary clarifications required to reasonably estimate.

• Maintain assumptions log and RAID from pre‑sales through contract signature.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Banking/FinTech services with 5+ years in core banking implementations.

• Strong experience working with services estimation, scoping and solutioning

• Excellent written skills with sufficient experience creating and managing SOWs

• Proven track record estimating and planning multi‑country/multi‑module programs.

• Ability to translate complex customer needs into services solutions requirements

• Familiarity with cloud-based service delivery, PaaS/SaaS solutions

• Skilled in pricing models (T&M, FP, hybrid), and risk management.

• Excellent customer communication and executive presence.

• Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving capabilities

• Certifications preferred: PMP/Prince2, Agile (Scrum/SAFe), Six Sigma; ITIL a plus.

We are proud to offer a range of incentives to our employees worldwide. These benefits are available to everyone, regardless of grade, and reflect the values we uphold:

·       Flexibility: Enjoy unlimited vacation, based on your location and business priorities. Hybrid working arrangements, and inclusive policies such as paid time off for voting, bereavement, and sick leave.

·       Well-being: Access Confidential one-on-one therapy through our Employee Assistance Program, find support from our network of Wellbeing Champions and Gather Groups, and a calendar of monthly events and initiatives designed to help you thrive - Inside and Outside of work.

·       Medical, life & disability insurance, retirement plan, lifestyle and other benefits*

·       Sustainability: Benefit from paid time off for volunteering and donation matching.

·       DEI: Participate in multiple DE&I groups for open involvement (e.g., Count Me In, Culture@Finastra, Proud@Finastra, Disabilities@Finastra, Women@Finastra).

·       Career Development: Access online learning and accredited courses through our Skills & Career Navigator tool.

·       Recognition: Be part of our global recognition program, Finastra Celebrates, and contribute to regular employee surveys to help shape Finastra and foster a culture where everyone is engaged and empowered to perform at their best.

*Specific benefits may vary by location.

At Finastra, each individual is unique, bringing their own ideas, thoughts, cultural beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences together. We learn from one another, embrace and celebrate our differences, and create an environment where everyone feels safe to be themselves.

Be unique, be exceptional, and help us make a difference at Finastra!