Role purpose
The Manager, Pre-Sales Engineering leads the Pre-Sales Engineering team at one of the EMEA Power engineering hubs, translating qualified customer opportunities and solution concepts into technically robust, commercially viable and timely integrated power solutions.
The role provides leadership and technical governance across the proposal engineering process, ensuring that customer requirements are effectively translated into executable solutions and high-quality technical deliverables. The Manager is accountable for developing a high-performing Pre-Sales organization that combines engineering excellence, operational discipline and customer focus. As the BU scale, the team must support a multi-fold increase in opportunity volume without a proportional increase in headcount.
Role scope
Hub-based leadership of a Pre-Sales Engineering team of 10-15 people, comprising Pre-Sales Engineers, Pre-Sales Electrical Engineers, a Senior CAD Engineer and MV switchgear Application Engineers, covering electrical design, system-level integration and multidisciplinary coordination for engineered solutions during the proposal phase. The model is local managers at the engineering hubs. Active hubs are Bologna, Ireland and Ras Al Khaimah.
Key accountabilities
People and team leadership
- Lead, develop and retain a multidisciplinary Pre-Sales Engineering team, setting clear objectives, managing performance, recruiting and onboarding talent, and building technical capability through competency matrices, structured training, coaching, career development, stretch assignments and a transparent career progression framework.
- Provide line management to Application Engineers for the MV switchgear product line, ensuring clear objectives, capability development and effective integration of their technical expertise into the wider Pre-Sales Engineering process.
- Assign and prioritize engineering resources across opportunities based on complexity, workload, capability and business priorities, using specialist pools and cross-regional resource allocation to optimize capacity, protect cycle time and quality, and manage escalation when capacity is constrained.
End-to-end proposal engineering
- Own the Pre-Sales Engineering process from RFQ (Request for Quotation) intake and requirement interpretation through solution design, feasibility validation, proposal delivery and clean handover to Engineering-to-Order (ETO), ensuring technically sound, commercially viable and buildable solutions are delivered on time.
- Lead multidisciplinary solution development across electrical, mechanical, controls, EPMS (Electrical Power Monitoring System), for Power SKIDs, Power Rooms, Modular Data Centres, Cable Landing Stations and other engineered power solutions.
- Collaborate with factory Engineering and suppliers to validate technical feasibility, cost and lead time before commercial commitment.
- Act as the technical escalation point for non-standard requirements, architectural decisions and feasibility judgements
- Provide technical leadership on complex and strategic opportunities, ensuring customer requirements are translated into executable and commercially viable solutions.
Technical quality and standards
- Establish and enforce technical standards, design reviews and governance mechanisms to ensure first-time-right delivery, including compliance of SLDs (single-line diagrams), network calculations, protection coordination, arc-flash assessments and integrated layouts with applicable IEC, IEEE, CE/UKCA and EMEA national requirements.
Standardisation, reuse and digital engineering
- Drive standardization, reuse and deviation discipline through validated building blocks, reference architectures, standard configurations and design rules, ensuring custom solutions are justified where approved standards cannot be applied; build and maintain the engineering knowledge library (standard schematics, reusable building blocks, reference architectures, design rules and lessons learned) so that solutions are configured rather than redesigned from scratch.
- Drive adoption of CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote), configurators, simulation, digital-twin validation, engineering automation and AI-enabled tools, identifying repetitive or high-effort activities suitable for digital enablement and ensuring validated technical knowledge and data are incorporated into digital engineering initiatives.
Interfaces and performance
- Partner with Technical Sales, Application Engineering, Principal Application Engineers and Engineering-to-Order on complex and strategic opportunities, ensuring effective technical interfaces, hand-offs and escalation, while converting specialist knowledge and project learnings into reusable standards, training and engineering assets.
- Track and improve key team and process KPIs, including proposal cycle time, technical accuracy, workload utilisation and business contribution, using performance insights to drive continuous improvement, customer satisfaction and profitable growth.
Working model and level expectations
Customer engagement
Mainly internal; occasional customer and consultant contact alongside the team. Daily interfaces with factory Engineering, suppliers and ETO.
Travel expectation
Low to moderate; travel between hubs, to customers and for training.
Typical work
Team leadership, proposal engineering governance from RFQ to ETO handover, design reviews, technical escalation, workload balancing, standardisation and reuse.
Decision profile
Owns resourcing and prioritisation at the hub and technical sign-off of proposal designs before commercial commitment; escalates structural matters.
Leadership expectation
People leadership: recruitment, development, performance and retention.
Role differentiators
- Manages people and the engineering process, not just individual designs.
- Balances technical depth with commercial awareness and stakeholder management.
- Owns the end-to-end proposal engineering workflow, from RFQ to ETO handover.
- Bridges the gap between Sales, Application Engineering and factory execution.
Qualifications and experience
Essential
- Bachelor's degree in engineering — electrical preferred — or equivalent practical experience.
- Minimum 10 years of experience in electrical design, pre-sales engineering or integrated solution design, with at least 3 years in a team leadership or management role.
- Deep understanding of power distribution architecture, data centre infrastructure and mission-critical systems.
- Strong command of IEC/IEEE, CE/UKCA and EMEA national codes and standards.
- Hands-on expertise in SLD design, network calculations, protection coordination and arc-flash assessment.
- Solid knowledge of MV switchgear applications and power distribution product lines.
- Proven ability to manage workload across a team, prioritise competing demands and deliver under time pressure.
- Experience improving process, standardisation or tooling in a technical team, and scaling throughput without proportional headcount growth.
- Strong written and verbal English; local language capability as required by the hub; additional EMEA languages an advantage.
Preferred
- Experience with CAD, BIM, network-calculation tools and power-system simulation; familiarity with digital-twin validation an advantage.
- Experience with grid-interaction studies: power simulation, BESS and Microgrid design.
Core competencies
People leadership
Throughput and quality management
Standardisation and reuse
Prioritisation under load
Capability building
Process improvement
Cross-functional collaboration
Change leadership
Digital and tool adoption
Resilience under ambiguity
Indicative success measures
- Delivery & cycle time: Accurate, complete and on-time technical inputs, with shorter average cycle time and regional due dates and SLAs met consistently.
- Proposal quality & first-time-right: High-quality, technically compliant proposals that are right the first time, with no deals lost for technical reasons. Clean ETO handovers with assumptions, exclusions and open items documented, so that downstream rework and engineering change orders go down.
- Capacity & throughput: Good use of resources, balanced workloads, few bottlenecks, and more opportunities supported per engineer without the same increase in headcount.
- Standardisation, reuse & digital tools: More reuse of validated building blocks and reference architectures, a higher standard-versus-custom ratio, and wider use of CPQ, configurators and AI-enabled tools to cut effort and cycle time.
- Team capability & cross-functional collaboration: Growing team skills and knowledge sharing, less reliance on individual experts, and clear career paths. Clear, agreed roles with AEs, Technical Sales, Application Engineering, ETO and Sales Support, with regular process improvements.
Compensation for this position will vary based on the candidate's location, skills, experience, and qualifications. The salary range applicable to your location will be shared during the recruitment process and/or disclosed in accordance with local pay transparency requirements.
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