U.S. Academic Account Manager

The Mission for Altair’s Global Academic Program team: “Mechanize, Replicate, and Scale” to maximize the number of students & faculty in academia worldwide using Altair software.

Job Summary

Develop and implement a localized strategy for growing the use of Altair software within academic institutions throughout the United States – in support of the Mission of Altair’s Global Program Academic team. As Academic Account Manager, you will promote and support use of two software platforms: (1) Altair HyperWorks™ for Design & Simulation; and (2) Altair RapidMiner™ for Data Science and AI/ML. While academic revenue growth is important, the primary measure of success is increased software usage.

What You Will Do

(75%) In your assigned region, identify academic customers to pursue, then work with them directly to maximize their use of Altair software

·         Annually, create and execute a successful academic business development strategy.

·         Identify key academic institutions and people in your region, and then directly interface with them to help them adopt and successfully use Altair software.

·         Prioritize your pursuit of each academic institution and person by assessing whether they are a “good fit” with Altair’s vision, technologies, and focus areas.

·         By helping academic customers (faculty and students) achieve their goals, develop strong & enduring relationships with them so they naturally advocate for Altair.

·         Know the major trends and challenges in academia which provide significant business opportunities for Altair.  Understand the competitive landscape including Altair’s competitive differentiators in academia.

·         Provide ‘evidence’ to convince prospective academic customers that Altair solutions will help them achieve their goals. Work with Altair technical experts, as needed, to create such evidence in the form of compelling solution demonstrators and customer stories.

·         Optimize your storytelling to prospective academic customers to ensure that our messaging aligns with their needs & interests and highlights our unique competitive differentiators. To enable scalability, show that we have the best solutions to common-and-important academic customer challenges.

·         After gaining initial traction at key academic accounts, “land and expand” by connecting the dots and growing use of Altair software by more persons across academic departments and accounts.  Sell similar solutions to similar personas for similar goals.

·         Share helpful guidance, experiences & materials with other local Academic Account Managers (AMs) in each country, enabling them to learn from your achievements.  Similarly, understand and learn from their experiences & achievements.

 (5%) Collaborate with Altair’s Commercial Sales team

·         Work with our Commercial Account Managers and Pre-Sales Engineers to help strengthen 3-way bonds between Altair, our academic customers, and our industrial customers – around jobs that involve use of Altair software.

(10%) Collaborate with Altair’s Marketing team

·         Work with our Marketing team to design academic-focused sales & marketing campaigns that generate qualified leads. Propose and support relevant events and activities for your region.

·         Work with our Marketing team to effectively raise public awareness for our academic solutions & successes (e.g., via our website, marketing videos, social media posts, etc.)

(10%) Collaborate with Altair’s Product Development and Technical teams

·         Request assistance, as needed, from Altair technical experts – to present solution demonstrators which highlight the unique selling points (USPs) of Altair’s technologies. Cultivate strategic technology partnerships with targeted academic stakeholders.

·         Provide voice-of-customer feedback to our Product Development team (based on common-and-important academic use cases) – to help them understand perceived academic market opportunities and address some in their technology roadmap.

What You Will Need to Provide:

Required:

• Be entrepreneurial and passionate about a Business Development or Sales type role
• Enjoy interacting with others and helping them be successful with technology. Be outgoing and an effective communicator
• Seek genuine win-win for Altair and its customers
• Take initiative and be able to work with a wide range of direction, from large to small
• Work proactively. Be a self-starter. Propose and pursue solutions that you believe will help solve important challenges for our Academic Team and improve our performance
• Envision the future, implement repeatable processes enabling us to scale faster, and seek continual improvements

Helpful:

• BS degree in Computer Science, Informatics, Statistics, Engineering or similar
• Experience in a customer-facing role in software sales or technical pre-sales; a solid understanding of the importance of selling solutions involving software and/or services
• Have interest in, and ideally some experience, in the Data Science and AI/ML space
• Have interest in, and ideally some experience, in the Engineering Simulation space
• Familiarity with The Challenge Sale technique
• Experience with Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and/or Machine Learning (ML)
• MS or MBA degree

 How You Will Be Successful:

• Envision the Future
• Communicate Honestly and Broadly 
• Seek Technology and Business “Firsts” 
• Embrace Diversity and Take Risks 

 What We Offer: 

• Competitive Salary
• Comprehensive Benefit Package
• Outstanding Work/Life Balance
• Flex Time
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• 401(k) with matching contributions
• Unlimited vacation and Unlimited sick days
• Paid holidays
• Paid Time Off for Community Service
• Collaborative environment
• Charitable Matching Program

 Why Work with Us:

Altair is a global technology company providing software and cloud solutions in the areas of product development, high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Altair enables organizations in nearly every industry to compete more effectively in a connected world, while creating a more sustainable future. With more than 3,000 engineers, scientists, and creative thinkers in 25 countries, we help solve our customer’s toughest challenges and deliver unparalleled service, helping the innovators innovate, drive better decisions, and turn today’s problems into tomorrow’s opportunities. 

Our vision is to transform customer decision making with data analytics, simulation, and high-performance computing and artificial intelligence (AI). 

For more than 30 years, we have been helping our customers integrate electronics and controls with mechanical design to expand product value, develop AI, simulation, and data-driven digital twins to drive better decisions, and deliver advanced HPC and cloud solutions to support unlimited idea exploration. To learn more, please visit altair.com.  

Ready to go?  #ONLYFORWARD 

 
At our core we are explorers; adventurers; pioneers. We are the brains behind some of the world’s most revolutionary innovations and are not only comfortable in new and uncharted waters, we dive in headfirst. We are the original trailblazers that make the impossible possible, discovering new solutions to our customer’s toughest challenges.  

Altair is an equal opportunity employer. Our backgrounds are diverse, and every member of our global team is critical to our success. Altair's history demonstrates a belief that empowering each individual authentic voice reinforces a culture that thrives because of the uniqueness among our team.