Pre-sales or Solution Architect

Hey future BLM,

I guess you probably know the differences between those 2 roles now. I however am still finding out.

Remember I was employed as a Project Lead. The role calls for me to manage and lead a team to carry out project works. However this is a SME and roles tend to overlap. As such, my director informed me that he is looking for me to be involved in either Pre-sales or Solution Architect. I must say, I am both nervy and excited about this.

I am guessing that Pre-sales would mean that I be assisting the sales team to pitch for contracts. What this seems to mean is that the sales team would generate interests and bring in the contact. When a potential customer responded, they would pitch the products/services to them. I would thus assist in the pitch to ensure that what the sales team promise, the engineering side could deliver. The promising part is that I would get some much needed sales experience from this. The down side is that this would be conflicting to the engineering role.

Solution Architect is a relatively new term to me. From what I imagine, this is the guy whom would design how the system would work. What parts would be needed, what structure the product should be build on, etc etc. This feels more at home to me. I have been keen on designing stuffs for a while now. However all the years in project management duties, all I ever did was to manage schedule, budget and relationships. At times, I envy those engineers whom get to do the exciting stuff while I just await their results. However the only down side to this is that, the growth is limited. An engineer would still be just an engineer. The progress to higher roles does not start from here.

I guess there is no clear path to success. I could do something I like and be lamenting on the limited growth or try to go out of my comfort zone and see if that works for me. The future is built on every small step I make now. It would be interesting that when future me reads back on this, he would laugh. Well I hope future me has no regrets.

Past BLM.