Data Platform Sales SME

• Introduction
• At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges.

As a Product Sales SME for Data Platform, you will utilize your deep knowledge and experience with IBM's Data products to drive business growth. This role focuses on IBM's Enterprise Data side of the platform, including watsonx.data, watsonx.data intelligence, watsonx.data integration, Confluent among other OEM solutions. You will serve as the primary Subject Matter Expert across accounts in the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, supporting all industries.

• Your role and responsibilities
• Your Role and ResponsibilitiesYou are the owner of your business across your territory and client set.

As the Data Platform SME, you are accountable for driving revenue, building pipeline, and delivering measurable client value across the full watsonx.data portfolio and Confluent. Your responsibilities span three main pillars:

Business Ownership

• Own the budget for your assigned product set and territory, with operational rigor to deliver against budget objectives each quarter
• Develop and execute a territory business plan that generates new pipeline and grows opportunities quarter to quarter
• Maintain deep awareness of your install base, competitive landscape, and market dynamics across your client set
• Lock in and drive execution on Americas sales plays to generate pipeline, including Data Lakehouse, Data Intelligence, Data Integration, and Real-Time Streaming playsProduct Expertise
• Achieve and maintain Level 3 minimum product expertise across watsonx.data, watsonx.data intelligence, watsonx.data integration, and Confluent
• Understand the competitive landscape across product sets, including Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, Informatica, Collibra, and Confluent alternatives, and effectively handle objections and sell through competitive challenges
• Develop deep conversational capability across product differentiators and what sets IBM apart in the market, including open lakehouse architecture, hybrid deployment flexibility, AI-powered data engineering agents, governed data products, and real-time event streamingValue Delivery
• Articulate IBM Data Platform offerings in the context of the value they create for a specific enterprise and persona, connecting capabilities to business outcomes such as cost optimization, AI readiness, regulatory compliance, and time-to-insight
• Own the generation of value assessments and mutually align with clients on measurable use cases tied to the watsonx.data portfolio
• Align with the Americas Value Assessment team to scale value assessment methodology across a growing number of client engagements in territory
• Ensure operational rigor so that a value assessment is part of all pilots and hands-on technology engagements, with client executive sponsorship to progress to closure
• Required technical and professional expertise
• 5+ years of experience in enterprise software sales, technical sales, or solutions engineering with a focus on data platforms, data management, analytics, or AI
• Demonstrated ability to own and close complex, multi-product enterprise transactions
• Strong track record of meeting or exceeding quota targets
• Experience selling into mid-market and enterprise accounts across multiple industries
• Ability to engage with both technical stakeholders (data engineers, architects, CTOs) and business stakeholders (CDOs, CFOs, line-of-business leaders)
• Willingness to travel within the assigned Southeast territory (NC, SC, KY, TN, GA, AL) up to 60%
• Watsonx.

data:

Open hybrid data lakehouse, multi-engine query optimization (Presto, Spark), data virtualization, structured and unstructured data management, Apache Iceberg

• Watsonx.

data intelligence:

Data governance, metadata management, automated data quality, data lineage, data cataloging, data product development and sharing, Knowledge Accelerators

• Watsonx.

data integration:

ETL/ELT pipelines (DataStage), real-time streaming, data replication, data observability, AI-powered data engineering agents, hybrid deployment

Confluent:

Apache Kafka, real-time event streaming, stream processing, connectors ecosystem, hybrid and multi-cloud event architectures, schema registry

Cross-portfolio:

How all four products work together to deliver governed, real-time, AI-ready data across hybrid environments

• Preferred technical and professional experience
• Prior experience with IBM Data & AI products or competitive platforms (Databricks, Snowflake, Informatica, Collibra, Cloudera)
• Experience with data lakehouse architectures, data governance frameworks, or real-time streaming platforms
• Technical certifications in relevant data or cloud platforms
• Familiarity with regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, public sector) and associated data compliance requirements
• Experience building territory business plans and managing pipeline through CRM systems (Salesforce)IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.