Senior Project Solutions Engineer

The Project Solutions Engineering (PSE) Team works with Sales to understand our customer's technical requirements, prioritize customer projects, conduct evaluation studies, develop winning project strategies, and deliver full solutions that best fit the customers’ application requirements in both technical feasibility and solution cost, while meeting Cognex expectations for profitability.

Essential Functions:

• Travel onsite as needed to gather more information to ensure design accuracy, provide technical guidance and pre-sales support to influence customer on a potential sale by conducting competitive solution trials, demonstrations, presentations, or technical evaluations.
• Develop technical and commercial design(s) on assigned projects or accounts that differentiate Cognex, win the business, and deliver the expected growth and profitability.
• Review and identify technical risks on sales quotation/proposal document by ensuring viable set of hardware and software requirements as applicable on BOM based on customer needs.  May need to communicate risk or build risk mitigation plans.
• Work closely with sales and the end customer to ensure the project is properly documented with an accurate solution in order to easily hand off to the project execution team (Project Manager, Field Service Engineers, or 3rd Party contractors). May help with deviations as needed.
• Provide internal and external mentoring and training as applicable to support project execution, improve the handover process, or support certification/commissioning activity.
• Collect, consolidate, and disseminate competitive information gathered during the pursuit process and communicate unmet market needs, competitor product/service analysis, and market trends to direct management and/or members of the Business Unit.
• Following project completion, take a proactive role in continuous improvement efforts by obtaining feedback from the Project Execution team on developed solutions to enhance solutions and support troubleshooting, training, and personal development.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Ability to determine root cause on electro-mechanical solutions by using strong troubleshooting skills and sound judgement.
• Ability to quickly turn around complex technical solutions by interpreting customer specifications, organizing the information, analyzing it, and applying advanced problem-solving skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to effectively communicate, influence, lead, and present to various stakeholders.
• Strong time management skills with the ability to effectively prioritize workload, collaborate with assigned project personnel during the project life cycle, and will help with escalations on other projects from less experienced members.
• Strong understanding of the sales cycle and positively impact sales opportunities. Able to deal tactfully with sensitive customer issues as needed.
• Strong knowledge of working safely in industrial environments by strictly following safety guidelines and protocols (May vary per region/customer)
• Wide range of knowledge including industrial communication methods, Networks, Programming languages, image processing with a strong understanding of lighting and optics.
• Strong industry knowledge to include movement of product, understanding of Controls, PLCs, Warehouse Management Systems, Automation Conveyance method), and gantry robotics.
• Ability to conduct, troubleshoot, and remote support others on onsite optimizations, perform trials, and conduct data analytics to improve performance on solutions.

Minimum Education and Work Experience Required:

• BA degree in a technical discipline such as Engineering, Computer Science, or relevant equivalent technical experience
• Typically requires a minimum of 5+ years’ experience in technical application development. Experience in a related or high-tech industry preferred.
• Adapt to flexible working hours including the availability to work evening and weekend hours or varying work patterns depending on customer or project needs. Ability to be on-call and respond to customer emergencies.
• Ability to travel between 30-50% of the time. Travel will vary depending on region, time of year, and customer needs.
• Ability to work in production or industrial environments at our customer sites.
• Maintain customer confidentiality to protect confidential or sensitive customer information is a requirement.
• Must possess English language proficiency as a minimum for the role.