Technical Sales Solution Architect
kardex · Cincinnati ·
- Employment
- Full time
- Category
- Architecture
- Experience
- 5+ years
The role sits at the intersection of sales, solution design, operations, and technology. The Solution Architect engages early in the sales process to understand a prospect's operational challenges, material flows, business requirements, and growth objectives, then translates those requirements into an automation strategy centered primarily around AutoStore, conveyor and material handling technologies, and the broader Kardex Solutions portfolio.
A critical component of the role is making automation understandable and compelling. The Solution Architect will lead customer discovery sessions, solution workshops, product demonstrations, conceptual solution reviews, and technical presentations that enable customers to understand not only how the technology works, but how it improves their operation and delivers measurable business value.
The successful candidate will combine strong knowledge of warehouse operations and automation with the communication skills necessary to engage everyone from warehouse operators and engineers to senior executives.
Your tasks
Key Responsibilities
Customer Discovery & Requirements Definition
Partner with Sales to engage prospective and existing customers during the earliest stages of an opportunity.
Lead structured discovery sessions to understand:
- Current warehouse and fulfillment processes
- Receiving, replenishment, storage, picking, packing, and shipping workflows
- SKU profiles and inventory characteristics
- Order profiles and demand patterns
- Required throughput and peak operating conditions
- Service-level requirements
- Labor requirements and constraints
- Available building footprint and facility limitations
- Growth expectations
- Integration requirements
- Customer business objectives and investment criteria
Translate operational discussions into clear functional and technical requirements that can be used by Kardex Solutions engineering and solution design teams.
Identify gaps in customer-provided information and work with Sales and the customer to collect the data required to develop an appropriate solution.
Solution Development
Develop high-level automation concepts that address the customer's operational and business requirements.
Evaluate where technologies such as:
- AutoStore
- Conveyor and sortation
- Goods-to-person technologies
- Pick and pack workstations
- AMRs and other mobile robotics
- Warehouse execution and control software
- Peripheral automation and value-added technologies
can be combined to create an effective end-to-end solution.
Work closely with Kardex Solutions engineering and design teams as opportunities progress from conceptual design into detailed engineering and proposal development.
Help ensure that proposed solutions balance:
- Operational performance
- Technical feasibility
- Scalability
- Simplicity
- Customer experience
- Implementation risk
- Capital investment
- Long-term total cost of ownership
AutoStore Solution Support
Serve as a knowledgeable customer-facing resource for AutoStore opportunities.
Help customers understand concepts including:
- Grid and storage design
- Bin sizing and utilization
- Robot and port requirements
- Throughput
- Workstation strategies
- Picking and replenishment processes
- System expansion
- Redundancy and availability
- Software integration
- Operational optimization
Support the Sales team in explaining why a particular AutoStore configuration is appropriate for the customer's operation.
Collaborate with internal engineering resources to ensure assumptions used during early sales conversations align with the final engineered solution.
Conveyor & Integrated Material Handling
Support the development and presentation of integrated conveyor solutions connecting AutoStore and surrounding warehouse processes.
Understand and help define material flows including:
- Tote transportation
- Carton transportation
- Order consolidation
- Packing
- Sortation
- Shipping
- Replenishment
- Exception handling
Help customers understand how AutoStore, conveyor, software, and peripheral technologies work together as a complete system rather than as individual pieces of equipment.
Product Demonstrations
Develop and deliver compelling demonstrations of Kardex Solutions products and technologies.
Demonstrations may include:
- Live AutoStore demonstrations
- Warehouse software demonstrations
- Solution simulations
- Conceptual system layouts
- Customer workflow demonstrations
- Operational scenarios
- Digital demonstrations
- Customer-specific use cases
Whenever practical, demonstrations should reflect the customer's actual operation rather than generic functionality.
Translate technical capabilities into clear customer outcomes such as:
- Increased throughput
- Reduced labor dependency
- Improved storage density
- Increased order accuracy
- Improved ergonomics
- Greater scalability
- Improved system availability
- Reduced operating cost
Sales Support
Act as a technical partner to Kardex Solutions Sales Managers throughout the opportunity lifecycle.
Participate in:
- Customer discovery meetings
- Qualification calls
- Site visits
- Solution workshops
- Executive presentations
- Technical presentations
- Demonstrations
- RFP responses
- Proposal presentations
- Customer reference visits
- Trade shows and industry events
Help Sales determine whether an opportunity is technically and commercially aligned with the capabilities of Kardex Solutions.
Identify potential technical risks, scope gaps, unrealistic expectations, or solution constraints early in the sales process.
Support the development of clear value propositions and solution differentiators.
Solution Storytelling
Translate complex automation technology into a clear story that customers can understand.
Present solutions differently depending on the audience.
For operations leaders, explain:
- Workflow
- Labor impact
- Throughput
- Reliability
- Ergonomics
- Operational flexibility
For engineering and IT teams, explain:
- Technical architecture
- Controls
- Interfaces
- System performance
- Integration requirements
For executives, explain:
- Business impact
- ROI
- Scalability
- Risk
- Strategic value
Ensure Kardex Solutions proposals communicate the business outcome of the solution, not simply the equipment being supplied.
Internal Collaboration
Work closely with:
- Sales
- Solution Design
- Engineering
- Software
- Project Management
- Customer Service
- Product Management
- Marketing
- Strategic technology partners
Provide structured feedback to Product Management and Engineering regarding recurring customer requirements and market needs.
Help develop reusable sales tools such as:
- Discovery templates
- Demonstration environments
- Solution presentation templates
- Customer use cases
- ROI tools
- Technical comparison documents
- Application guides
Key Performance Indicators
Success in this role may be measured through:
- Sales opportunities supported
- Quality and completeness of customer requirements
- Percentage of qualified opportunities progressing to solution development
- Proposal conversion / win rate
- Effectiveness of customer demonstrations
- Reduction in late-stage scope changes
- Accuracy of early solution assumptions
- Customer engagement during workshops and demonstrations
- Sales team adoption of Solution Architect resources
- Development of repeatable demonstration and solution-selling tools
The role should ultimately help Kardex Solutions increase win rate, shorten the sales cycle, improve solution quality, and reduce the technical risk associated with opportunities entering engineering.
Qualifications
Required Experience
- 5+ years of experience in warehouse automation, material handling, distribution operations, solution engineering, systems integration, or a related field.
- Strong understanding of warehouse and distribution center operations.
- Experience supporting customer-facing technical or solution-selling activities.
- Ability to understand operational data and translate it into automation requirements.
- Strong presentation and communication skills.
- Ability to communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience working collaboratively with Sales and Engineering organizations.
- Ability to manage multiple opportunities simultaneously.
Preferred Experience
Experience with one or more of the following is strongly preferred:
- AutoStore
- Goods-to-person systems
- Conveyor systems
- Sortation
- AS/RS
- AMRs / AGVs
- Warehouse robotics
- WMS, WCS, or WES software
- Warehouse simulation
- Material handling systems integration
- Distribution center solution design
Experience working for a material handling integrator, automation provider, consulting organization, or sophisticated distribution operation is highly desirable.
Technical Competencies
The successful candidate should understand many of the following concepts:
- Warehouse material flow
- Order fulfillment processes
- Throughput calculations
- SKU velocity
- Inventory profiles
- Storage density
- Pick rates
- Peak demand analysis
- Conveyor capacity
- System bottlenecks
- Availability and redundancy
- Controls architecture
- Host-system integration
- WMS/WCS/WES environments
- ROI and automation business cases
The Solution Architect does not need to perform every aspect of detailed engineering but must possess enough technical depth to identify requirements, develop credible concepts, challenge assumptions, and effectively engage both customers and Kardex engineering specialists.
Professional Skills
The ideal candidate is:
- Consultative rather than transactional
- Technically curious
- Comfortable asking detailed operational questions
- Able to challenge customer assumptions professionally
- Commercially aware
- Highly credible in front of customers
- Comfortable presenting to executives
- Capable of facilitating workshops
- Able to simplify complex concepts
- Collaborative across departments
- Comfortable working in an entrepreneurial and rapidly growing environment
Travel
Approximately 30–50% travel may be required depending on customer activity.
Travel will primarily support:
- Customer discovery sessions
- Facility assessments
- Demonstrations
- Solution workshops
- Proposal presentations
- Customer reference visits
- Industry events
Role in the Kardex Solutions Sales Process
The Solution Architect should become involved before a solution is engineered.
The preferred engagement model is:
Qualify → Discover → Define Requirements → Develop Concept → Demonstrate → Validate → Engineer → Propose → Close
The Solution Architect owns the technical-commercial portion of the early stages of this process and acts as the bridge between the customer's operational requirements, the Sales organization, and Kardex Solutions engineering resources.
The objective is simple:
Understand the customer's operation well enough to demonstrate and articulate the right Kardex solution before significant engineering resources are committed.
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