Solutions Architect

The OVO Group’s mission is to drive progress towards net zero carbon living. To reach zero, we need everyone to come together. Not as customers buying energy, but as members with a common goal. Find out more here

Where in the world of OVO will I be working?

Kaluza is the centrepiece of OVO Group's ambition to become the world leader in distributed energy technology. Kaluza is shaping the future: a distributed, consumer-centric energy system where Kaluza’s platform connects energy retailers, grid & network operators and consumers to provide clean, affordable energy for everyone.

Our platforms, developed in house as part of the evolution of Europe’s leading independent energy company,  enable energy suppliers to move beyond simple static fossil fuel based energy propositions with analogue metering to an agile, IoT, smart metered, sustainable world. 

Kaluza provide solutions for the challenge faced by grid operators, energy suppliers and device manufacturers of integrating millions of energy intensive appliances such as electric vehicles onto the grid. 

We are now seeking a Solutions Architect, reporting to Ed Conolly, our Chief Technology Officer, but working day-to-day as part of our commercial team engaging with existing and potential platform clients. This role is critical to achieve commercialisation of our platforms, and help us lead the market as the global technology platform for retail energy.

What will I be doing?

We provide PaaS and SaaS cloud solutions to energy utilities.

We’re looking for an outstanding candidate to join the Kaluza commercial team as a Solutions Architect. The Solutions Architect is responsible for presenting product offerings and solutions in the best light to prospects and customers to best meet their business objectives. Our Solution Architects are able to take complex business solutions and pieces of technology and explain them in a simple and easy to understand way.

Achieving this requires us to gain the customer’s confidence in our company’s leadership in energy platform solutions and the associated technical infrastructure, as well as, removing any technical objections during the sales cycle. To accomplish this, the Solutions Architect has a strong desire to demonstrate their technical and/or sales skills, including the skill set to discover business requirements, develop a technical sales strategy, configure and demonstrate the solutions that address these requirements and provide business value.

The role is both business and technical - it is as important to understand the customers requirements and the use cases that they have as it is to understand how our solutions meet these. Candidates must be able to work rapidly in a consultative and collaborative way with customers to discover their business needs and then be able to present back, often with a solution demonstration of how Kaluza meets these needs and goes further still to add our Wow! factor.

Specific responsibilities include

• Understand customer goals and challenges and map those back to the Kaluza product portfolio
• Design, build, and demonstrate unique and innovative solutions to address these challenges
• Present Kaluza technology infrastructure, including demonstrating deep familiarity with the PaaS and SaaS stack
• Immerse yourself in a self-guided apprenticeship across product, sales, technical training etc to acquire and maintain the knowledge necessary to be effective in the position
• Respond effectively to RFIs/RFPs

• Using insight & key findings to iterate future sales processes, implementations, and feed back into the product team to drive further customer acquisition and success

Is this the job for me?

Prior experience of customer-facing solution selling in a complex, high-touch SaaS environment and associated technology is required. Experience in energy technology systems and the unique challenges faced by utilities would be highly advantageous.

• You’ll have outstanding experience in developing commercial partnerships within the PaaS / SaaS space
• You will be adept at delivering results within complex, long-lead sales cycles
• Have excellent stakeholder management and communication skills
• Knowledge of distributed and reactive systems
• Knowledge of cyber-security and deployment processes
• Analytical skills to create the winning solution
• Solid oral, written, presentation and interpersonal communication skills - ability to create and perform demonstrations of our solutions
• Ability to work as part of a network of cross-functional teams to solve technical problems
• Be entrepreneurial, ambitious and tenacious
• You’re a storyteller and able to sell a vision both externally and internally
• You’re not an empire builder
• You roll your sleeves up and get stuck in

You’ll love working with us if you…

• Embrace change and are passionate about working in a dynamic environment
• Find new concepts easy to understand
• Know your strengths, yet recognise there’s always more to learn from others
• Want to work on the world's most important challenge - the transition to zero carbon. 

Diverse teams are the best teams

We’re keen to meet people with varied backgrounds: the more inclusive we are the better our work will be. We want to build a team which represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills, and we decide employment on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply to jobs unless they tick every box. If you're excited about joining us and think you have much of what we're looking for, even if you're not 100% sure… we'd love to hear from you.