Joel Roland

As the Senior Manager for Specialist Technical field resources, I was responsible for leading a team of 20+ individuals across both Pre-Sales (Specialist Solution Architects) and Post-Sales Professional Services

During this period

• Provided strong technical leadership to help improve team productivity and morale
• Built out technical specialisations across Data Engineering, Data Science, Security, Data Warehousing and Core Platform
• Hired SSA's/Consultants as well as people performance management and promotion of key individuals
• Support GTM Teams including Core Pre-Sales (ie SA's) and other functions such as Marketing, Partner Enablement
• Lead, build and supported scaling business through programs such as Bootcamps, Hands on Labs and other technical marketing 1:M events
• Technical Executive Sponsor at Large accounts such as NAB

Key Highlights include:

• Building out Specialist SA team from 4 to 10 SSA's
• Scale Professional Services from 4 to 10 consultants
• >100% Sales Quota attainment in FY22
• Presidents Club Attendance in 2022
• Achieved 98/100 on Databricks Leadership Index (2023)

I was hired as the first APJ Solution Architecture leader to help scale and build out the Solution Architecture team in A/NZ.

During this period I was responsible for:

• Recruiting, interviewing and hiring employees and implemented mentoring program to promote positive feedback and engagement.
• Building relationships with customers and community to establish long-term business growth
• Engaging in product training, demonstrations and customer awareness
• Supported Sales Team and Sales leaders in technical strategy and product adoption
• Designing ANZ Pre-sales framework (e.g technical win framework, POC Documents etc)

Key Highlights include:

• >100% quota attainment in FY20, FY21
• Attained Presidents Club in 2021
• Hired 10+ Solution Architects

I was responsible for leading the Pre-Sales / Solution engineering team across Australia and New Zealand

Being the leader of specialist technical resources, I must ensure that we balance the needs of the sales team as well as the technical aspects of the platform we are selling

My key responsibilities included:

• Managed and motivated employees to be productive and engaged in work.
• Co-ordinate with sales management on driving growth via technical selling in key accounts and prospects
• Deliver Cloudera roadmap & strategy to customers
• Present Cloudera vision at events and conferences

Key Highlights:

• Lead team during merger of Hortonworks & Cloudera
• 100% Sales attainment in (FY19)
• Completed BetterUp Leadership program
• Presidents Club

My job was to provide technical and thought leadership for the Cloudera platform to customers and prospects and was promoted to Senior SE in 2017

In both roles, my key responsibilities included:

• Working with sales team on identifying and qualifying opportunities
• Leading technical solutioning on opportunities
• Account planning and strategy
• Technical product expertise across end-to-end stack
• Engagement with customers after sale to ensure post-sale customer satisfaction
• Scope & lead product POC’s
• Presenting at conferences & events

Across my time as SE, I lead & won many opportunities in key accounts such as: Vodafone, Vocus, Optus, South32, CBA, ASX

• My role was responsible to provide consulting expertise and oversight of projects as well as pre-sales assistance for opportunities and bids / proposals
• Using both traditional and next-gen technologies, my role was to understand CSC’s customers’ requirements and helped to provide guidance on technology to enable customers to make the shift to Big Data, while leveraging existing investments they made
• Key Achievements:
• Lead pre-sales offerings for CSC’s first Big Data PaaS (Cloudera) and BI-aaS (Cognos)
• Provide delivery lead on projects including BlueScope: Next-gen BI PaaS, Pfizer: Reporting & Analytics, Department of Health: EDW Project, CSC: Insurance Customer Retention, NSW Health: Data Governance & Analytics

• As the BI Solution architect my responsibilities were to design BI & Data Warehouse solutions for CSC’s clients
• During my time in this role, I worked across a large number of implementations in Manufacturing, Education, Finance, HR and Sales & Marketing
• Key Achievements:
• Worked across key projects including Department of Defence: eHealth (JEDHI), BHP: Analytics & Reporting, CSC Internal: Enterprise Reporting & Metrics
• Other