Professional Services Pre-Sales Specialist

Thales is a global technology leader with more than 83,000 employees on five continents. With over 7,500 people in the UK, operating across defence, space, aerospace, and digital security, we help build a future we can all trust. Thales supports the security and stability of our nation by providing extraordinary technology to our customers, as well as delivering social value to the UK with our products and services.

Thales’ Cyber Security Products business line provides data protection, access management and application security solutions that help customers protect sensitive information and intellectual property, and secure access to applications and data.

The Professional Services (PS) Pre-Sales Specialist drives services business growth across EMEA by connecting customer requirements, sales opportunities and delivery capabilities to shape well-defined, commercially viable services engagements.

Working with Sales, Sales Engineering and Professional Services Delivery, the specialist will translate business and technical requirements into clear proposals, realistic estimates and delivery-ready scopes of work.

Success requires a strong customer and business focus, technical credibility, commercial judgement and the ability to build trusted relationships across an international organization.

Key responsibilities

Scoping, proposals and commercial support:

• Lead pre-sales discussions to understand customer objectives, technical environments, constraints and desired outcomes.

• Lead discovery and scoping workshops with customers and internal stakeholders to prepare the Statements of Work (SOWs).

• Develop effort and cost estimates with Delivery and relevant technical specialists.

• Support pricing and margin discussions in accordance with applicable commercial and approval processes.

• Ensure proposed services are clearly scoped, appropriately positioned and realistic to deliver.

• Define an appropriate services approach, including deployment strategy, project phases, timelines, deliverables and customer prerequisites.

• Balance customer requirements and budget with technical feasibility, delivery capacity and commercial objectives.

Delivery Readiness and Handover

• Coordinate structured handover meetings when opportunities move into delivery.

• Ensure the handover includes agreed objectives, contractual scope, estimates, dependencies, risks and outstanding actions.

• Maintain accurate opportunity status before transferring to the delivery phase.

• Incorporate lessons learned from completed engagements into future proposals, estimates and service offerings.

Business Development and Services Portfolio:

• Drive Professional Services opportunities across EMEA, working with sales teams to identify customer needs and position appropriate engagements.

• Adapt existing services offerings to local market requirements, customer expectations and business priorities.

• Propose new offerings based on emerging demand, customer feedback and delivery experience.

• Articulate the value of Professional Services in enabling successful deployment, integration, migration and adoption.

• Identify opportunities for additional services that address genuine customer requirements.

• Prepare and deliver webinars, presentations and enablement sessions for Sales and Sales Engineering teams on PS offerings and engagement approaches.

Pipeline Management and Revenue Forecasting

• Maintain accurate and up-to-date Professional Services opportunities in Salesforce throughout the pre-sales lifecycle.

• Monitor the pipeline proactively, tracking opportunity maturity, anticipated close dates, delivery timing and forecast revenue.

• Build and maintain PS forecasts for the assigned region or opportunities.

• Identify potential resource, capacity and skills gaps early, and communicate them to Delivery and management.

• Work closely with Delivery to support the conversion of opportunities into executable engagements and secure associated PS revenue.

• Provide clear reporting and analysis to support business planning and management decisions.

Qualifications and Experience

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Management or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

• Masters preferred.

Experience

• At least 10 years of relevant professional experience, ideally within IT security or cybersecurity services.

• Demonstrable experience in Professional Services, technical pre-sales, consulting or customer support operations.

• More than 5 years of project management experience, including collaboration with technical implementation, systems integration or solution delivery teams.

• Experience developing services proposals, Statements of Work and effort estimates.

• Experience managing customer relationships and complex opportunities in an international environment.

Security Clearance Requirement:

Due to the nature of the work that we do at Thales, many of our roles are subject to security restrictions. This role requires to Security Clearance (SC) or eligible for SC. It would be advantageous if currently held, however, if not currently held, it is a requirement that the successful applicant undergo, achieve, and maintain SC Clearance prior to commencing employment.

To be eligible for full SC, you generally need to have resided in the UK for the last 5 years. In some circumstances, a minimum of 3 years’ residence in the UK over the last 5 years may be accepted, with additional overseas checks.

Please visit the UKSV website for further guidance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels/national-security-vetting-clearance-levels.

At Thales, we ensure equal opportunities, pay and working conditions for all. The benefits we offer include private medical insurance, buying or selling annual leave, cycle to work schemes, employee discounts, paid volunteering day, stocks and shares, annual bonus and much more depending on the role. Read more about our benefits here.

We are committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels valued for who they are and the unique strengths they bring. Discover more about our programmes, employee networks, wellbeing policies, and inclusive features here.

If this role isn’t quite right for you, we encourage you to join our talent community where your details will be shared with our recruitment teams for other potential opportunities. Join the Talent Community here.

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