MainOne is a leading provider of innovative telecom services and network solutions for businesses in West Africa. Our world-class submarine cable system running down the coast of West Africa, state of the art IP NGN network, growing regional and metro terrestrial fiber optic networks, and data center facilities enable broadband services for businesses needing solutions in West Africa. Our network is interconnected and peers with leading operators and internet exchanges worldwide to provide global reach to our customers.

Responsibilities
The Solutions Architect will develop and articulate solutions based on a customer’s strategic business or technical requirements ascertained from working with multiple business units across the customer’s organization.

• Assess solutions for their commercial merits and provide appropriate recommendations.
• Provide technical and business consultative leadership throughout the technical life cycle of technical solutions.
• Will be involved from pre-sales solution formulation through system deployment; including bid preparation and customer interface resulting in solutions architecture proposals.
• The Solutions Architect will prepare the technical solutions architectural and implementation design documents for all MainOne
• Product offering (IP Transit/Access, manged WIFI, MPLS, IPLC, Data Centre Collocation & Disaster Recovery and Voice)
• The Solutions Architect will maintain awareness of existing or potential customer software/hardware situations and proactively alert the project management, engineering, and customer facing groups of potential problems based upon strong working knowledge of software/hardware compatibility within the customer’s
• The Solutions Architect will stay current on technical specifications for hardware/software requirements of industry products through professional associations, trade journals, networking, and associated training and seminars.
• Convey customer feedback including feature requests and product issues to Product Management and Development teams.
• Coordinate with the sales team in formulating and building up proposal knowledge, including making technical demos and presentations to Main One
• Maintain and continually update technical understanding of products and providing advice to other team members where
• Provide technical input & support to the sales team as part of the sales process.
• Assist in the translation of customer needs/technical requirements to appropriate solutions by liaising with customers to understand, anticipate and meet their specific
• Ensure quality, up-to-date documentation exists for all service arrangements
• Manage and develop strategic partnerships with third party suppliers and other internal stakeholders for Cloud Aggregators or Managed Service Providers.
• Design service solutions for Managed Service customers in line with ITIL and/or industry best practice
• Manage multi-faceted projects with diverse stakeholders across different continents. A track record of successful project management is important.
• Familiarity with international, regional and local provider markets.

Qualifications, Skills & Competencies

Skills & Qualification Required;

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Information Communication Technology, Engineering or Computer Science Cisco CCNA/CCDA/CCIP/CCNP/CCDP/CWNA
• PMI, Prince 2 or other industry equivalent
• Certifications in Cloud Technologies, SDN is considered a plus for this
• At least three (3) years of experience in proposal development, designing architecture, and implementing provider solutions.
• At least Seven (7) years industry experience

Competencies;

• Creative and innovative approach.
• Experience in telecom architecture.
• Proactive with a positive ‘can do’ approach.
• Experience with Cisco equipment essential.
• Experience in WLAN technologies (Controllers, WAPs, and 802.11 fundamentals)
• Familiarity with 802.11g/n/ac/ax standards.
• Sound commercial business understanding and risk aware.
• Excellent communication, presentation and leadership skills.
• Experience relating business requirements to system and infrastructure components and designing the bill of materials for a project.
• Team player / Ability to work independently / Ability to work with little supervision
• Sound commercial business understanding and risk aware
• In-depth Knowledge of Radio/Microwave and terrestrial transmission systems.
• Experience in designing and deploying standardized VOIP technologies; SIP and H.323.
• Experience relating business requirements to system and infrastructure components and designing the bill of materials for a project.
• Set up and maintain a best practice library of company proposals and architectural designs proposed to customers with success and conversion rate indicators.
• In-depth level knowledge of networking technologies including but not limited to: TCP/IP (e.g. interpreting a packet trace file), WAN technologies, VPN(Layer 2 & 3), QoS, firewalls, routers, switches, DNS, Metro Ethernet, SDH, EoSDH, DWDM, VOIP and Data Centre Designs.

Demand on the Job

• Problem solving.
• Written and verbal communications
• Prioritising workload of self and others
• Contract negotiation and influencing skills.
• Relationship Management and Analytical Skills.
• Background in Telecom and Managed Services Environment.
• Strong background in solution design with focus on IP/MPLS/IPLC/VOIP/Metro Ethernet/Data Centre Collocation/Cloud technologies/Managed Services.