Specialist Solution Consultant

**General information**:

- Location
- Auckland
- Expertise
- Consulting, Governance & Security, Infrastructure, Networks, Sales, Technology
- Job Level
- Experienced
- Employment Type
- Permanent full-time
- Close Date
- 30-Apr-2025
- Ref #
- 59810

**Description & Requirements**:
**Spark NZ**

As New Zealand's largest telecommunications and digital services company, Spark’s purpose is to help all of New Zealand win big in a digital world. We provide mobile, broadband, and digital services to millions of New Zealanders and thousands of New Zealand businesses.

We operate in an exciting and constantly evolving industry, where the pace of change brings new and unique challenges every day, so we operate using Agile ways of working to allow us to meet the fast-changing needs of our customers. Agile replaces the traditional hierarchical organisational structure to produce a transparent, collaborative environment with highly productive teams who are empowered to deliver better outcomes for our customers, communities, and all of New Zealand.

**About the Role**:
We are looking for a passionate network and security expert, to join our team of presales consultants, to work as an advocate for our customers and help them maximise the return of their investment in network and security services.

As part of the Network and Security service line at Spark, you will be an expert in Networking and Security technologies, be a self-starting individual, not afraid to take ownership of a problem, and enjoy working in a collaborative manner with other teams across Spark. You will work across a wide variety of customer requirements, be an expert in solution selling, able to clearly articulate the business value of proposed solutions, and be prepared to provide technical leadership to customers and within Spark.

We need someone to build the trusted advisor relationship with our customers, to earn the right to challenge with respect and to position Spark and Spark products for a winning proposition.

If you can think on your feet and adapt to new requirements quickly while putting customer first, this is an exciting opportunity to be part of a high performing network and security consultants team within one of the leaders in the New Zealand market.

**Day to day you will be involved in**:

- Use structured solution selling methodologies and contribute to building IT strategies for customers
- Supporting large, complex customer engagements
- Lead customer-facing technical presentations and solution demonstrations tailored to the client's needs and specifications
- Consult with customers, to discover the critical factors that lead to a successful outcome and customer experience
- Prepare formal customer-facing solution proposal documents, to a high level of competency
- Seek and gain an understanding of a customer's fiscal preferences, cycles and budgets, and challenge these to drive for a win-win outcome
- Effectively coach others within the wider Spark solution consultants community
- Work with the wider Spark business product squads and provide feedback to continually evolve products, offers and market insights

**Core business skills required for this role**:

- 5 or more years of experience in presales working in the ICT industry, and experience working with networking and security solutions at an expert-level
- Strong presentation skills with an aptitude to communicate and influence a variety of buyer personas
- Experience working on business problems and connecting solutions with great attention to detail and enthusiasm
- Demonstrated the ability to learn functional and critical aspects of a constantly evolving product sets
- Excellent communication skills, and the ability to write clear and concise proposals to an exceptional level of quality
- Ability to instil trust and confidence with others and build a trusted advisor status with your customers and peers
- High level of accountability, and the ability to operate independently
- Proven track record of successful sales wins across large and complex customer engagements

**Core technical skills required for this role**:
Deep understanding and hands-on experience in high level design, pricing, transition and lifecycle management of functional network and security infrastructure including Local Area Network, Wireless Network, traditional MPLS Wide Area Network, Software Defined Network, Optical Transport Network, DC networks, Cloud connectivity, Internet peering, firewall, DDoS, SSE, SOC&SIEM and XDR.
- A demonstrated understanding of Zero Trust Network Architecture with knowledge of security standards and frameworks
- Advanced knowledge and experience in firewall technologies
- Advanced knowledge and experience in SOC, SIEM and XDR solutions
- Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Engineering or equivalent.
- A CCNP level of certification and significant experience in multiple major vendor spaces - Cisco, Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, Juniper, Fortinet, Palo Alto, C