Senior Sales Engineer

Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing Cooperative (IEM) is seeking an experienced Senior Sales Engineer to join our team. IEM builds “state-of-the-art” custom automated machinery for a variety of industries, consumer products, medical/life sciences, and light industrial.

IEM’s employee-owned, worker-cooperative structure provides a unique opportunity to work with a highly skilled and dedicated group of people.

Position Summary:

The Senior Sales Engineer will lead efforts to develop and maintain strong customer relationships, evaluate project opportunities, and align sales strategies with organizational goals. This role involves managing customer interactions, overseeing project evaluation and prioritization, and driving the sales department’s effectiveness through strategic planning and collaboration.

Key Responsibilities

Customer Management

• Serve as the primary point of contact, ensuring regular communication, timely updates, and resolution of concerns.
• Build long-term customer relationships by aligning with their strategic goals and preferences.
• Showcase IEM’s capabilities through customer visits, demonstrations, and leveraging past successes.
• Support customers in securing internal project approvals by providing necessary materials and resources.
• Understand and navigate procurement and approval processes.

Project Evaluation and Management

• Assess new projects' feasibility and alignment with IEM’s capabilities and customer goals.
• Identify and mitigate risks, including technical challenges, budget constraints, and resource availability.
• Promote and budget upfront concept development work to reduce risk and align engineering solutions with customer project requirements.

Concept Development and Budgeting

• Develop and evaluate project concepts tailored to customer requirements and technical feasibility.
• Present concepts to customers, facilitate discussions and refine solutions based on feedback.
• Prioritize face-to-face presentations.
• Estimate and align project budgets with customer expectations, adjusting scope & budget as necessary.

Project Prioritization

• Assess project priority based on customer importance, long-term opportunities, alignment with organizational capabilities, customer decision timelines, and project risks.
• Identify and focus resources on projects with high success potential or strategic value.
• Coordinate engineering resources to align with project requirements.
• Develop project lead times based on resource availability, engineering capabilities, and technical complexity.
• Ensure realistic schedules that support project success and meet customer expectations.

Sales Strategy

• Collaborate with the sales team to prioritize tasks and manage workloads effectively.
• Monitor and manage the sales pipeline to ensure consistent opportunities and workload stability.
• Develop and implement sales strategies aligned with business goals, refining them as needed.
• Prepare and deliver reports and updates to the Board of Directors on sales forecasts, performance recaps, strategies, updates on market conditions, and significant sales and marketing activities.

Lead Development

• Attract new customers through trade shows, marketing initiatives, and outreach efforts.
• Evaluate and develop leads from existing customer relationships.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of technical sales experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical or electrical engineering or equivalent experience.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills to build lasting customer relationships.
• Experience in project evaluation, risk assessment, and strategic sales planning.
• Proven leadership ability to manage a sales team and align tasks with organizational goals.
• Analytical skills to assess business objectives, project viability, and market conditions.
• Ability to develop innovative solutions and align them with customer needs.
• Ability to travel and work on-site in a team environment (not a remote position).