Pre-sales director in London

The Pre-sales Director is a senior leadership role responsible for the development, governance, and ongoing evolution of the organisation's service and technology portfolio. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the role ensures that the organisation's portfolio of services and solutions is clearly defined, aligned with strategic priorities, and effectively positioned to support sales engagement and end-to-end operational delivery.

The Pre-sales Director provides leadership across both Portfolio Management and Pre-Sales functions, ensuring customer requirements are translated into robust, commercially viable solutions and that services are developed with clear operational frameworks. The role works cross-functionally with Strategy, Marketing, Sales, and Service Delivery leadership to ensure the portfolio remains aligned with customer needs, operational capability, and market demand.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership for the development and management of the organisation's portfolio of services and solutions, ensuring corporate strategy is translated into clearly defined, commercially viable offerings that can be positioned in the market and delivered by operational teams.
• Oversee the life cycle management of portfolio offerings from concept and development through commercialisation, adoption, optimisation, and retirement.
• Lead and develop the organisation's Pre-Sales capability, including Solution Architects, Pre-Sales Consultants, and Pre-Sales Operations, ensuring a consultative, client-focused approach that supports sales engagement and solution development throughout the customer life cycle.
• Establish governance frameworks and best practices for solution design, ensuring proposals are robust, commercially sound, and aligned with operational delivery capability.
• Ensure consistent pre-sales engagement across the sales life cycle, including discovery, solution design, demonstrations, proof-of-concept activities, and responses to bids and proposals.
• Work closely with Sales leadership to support effective go-to-market execution and ensure strong collaboration between Sales and Pre-Sales teams throughout the opportunity life cycle.
• Provide leadership and oversight for proposal development and technical responses to bids, ensuring high-quality and consistent submissions.
• Ensure services and solutions are developed with appropriate operational frameworks, documentation, and implementation guidance to enable consistent delivery by operational teams.
• Work closely with Service Delivery leadership to ensure service readiness, operational capability, and life cycle considerations are incorporated into portfolio development.
• Support the Sales organisation by ensuring the portfolio is clearly defined, appropriately packaged, and supported with relevant solution frameworks, documentation, and collateral.
• Work with senior stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts to ensure portfolio development reflects technology direction, innovation, and organisational priorities.
• Maintain oversight of the technology and supplier ecosystem that underpins the portfolio, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy and service capability.
• Act as a key stakeholder in the processes and systems that support the life cycle from opportunity through to service delivery and revenue realisation.
• Monitor portfolio performance, service adoption, and market relevance, identifying opportunities for improvement and evolution.
• Work with supplier management functions to ensure vendors supporting the portfolio deliver value and align with strategic objectives.

Essential Skills and Qualifications

• Significant experience in portfolio management and pre-sales, solution architecture, or related leadership roles.
• Proven leadership experience managing multidisciplinary teams across portfolio management, pre-sales, and/or solution architecture functions.
• Strong understanding of Contact Centre, Network Services, Customer Experience, and related enterprise technology solutions.
• Experience translating organisational strategy into clearly defined services, solutions, and go-to-market propositions.
• Strong commercial and strategic thinking, with the ability to balance customer requirements, market opportunities, and operational delivery capabilities.
• Strong understanding of consultative pre-sales methodologies, including discovery, solution design, and bid/proposal development.
• Experience defining and managing service portfolios, including life cycle management, service definition, and portfolio evolution.
• Ability to work effectively with Marketing, Sales, Commercial, and Service Delivery leadership to support successful sales engagement and service delivery.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to operate effectively at senior leadership level.
• Understanding of industry frameworks and standards, including IT service management, information security, cyber security, and compliance frameworks.
• Experience within managed services, systems integration, customer experience technology, or similar technology-enabled service environments is desirable.