The posting
Abacus Consulting | Pre-Sales Engineer (GCP) – Digital & AI Transformation, Sub-Saharan Africa
WHO WE ARE
At Abacus, we specialize in technology, outsourcing, and people solutions, bringing nearly 40 years of experience shaped alongside the organizations we support. As a global professional services leader, our focus remains on providing bespoke solutions that enable organizations to create the future of business and embrace change for sustainable growth, powered by a global team of over 5,000 people.
WHAT WE DO
Across digital transformation, emerging technologies, SAP enterprise solutions, outsourcing, and human capital, we support organizations in building environments that operate effectively and scale with the business. Today, this extends to more than 1,500 enterprise clients, where the focus remains on creating systems that are not only functional, but ready to adapt and evolve over time.
Role Summary
Location: Nairobi, Kenya, with regular travel across Sub-Saharan Africa
Region Covered: Primary markets: Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, DRC. Secondary interest: Tanzania, Uganda, Indian Ocean markets
Function: Pre-Sales / Solutions Engineering, within the SSA Commercial team
This is a foundational hire for a young, high-growth region. Abacus is looking for a Pre-Sales Engineer who can sit at the intersection of commercial strategy and technical solutioning: someone who can take a business opportunity identified by the regional sales and relationship team, often before it is fully scoped or defined, and shape it into a technically sound, commercially compelling, and genuinely differentiated client proposal, whether that means a cloud and integration architecture, an AI governance framework built on Devenex's execution model, or, more often, both together.
This role is as much about judgment, narrative, and relationships as it is about technical depth. Proposals in this market are rarely won on technical merit alone: they are won by a solution story that a client's technical and business stakeholders can believe in, defended by someone the client trusts. The successful candidate will build and own that story, and the relationships behind it, across multiple markets, industries, and stakeholder groups at once, operating independently and owning outcomes end to end.
Responsibilities
- Partner with the Regional Director and account teams to shape client solutions across Abacus's platform portfolio: Google Cloud (Apigee, GCP, Gemini Enterprise) and Devenex, Abacus's proprietary AI Execution Control Plane.
- Translate early-stage, often loosely defined business opportunities into structured technical proposals, solution architectures, and statements of work.
- Own the technical narrative in client-facing pitches, translating complex platform capability, including AI governance and execution control concepts, into a business story that resonates with Telco, banking, and government stakeholders.
- Lead solutioning and proposal writing for RFPs and RFIs, producing content that is original, accurate, commercially sound, and personally defensible in front of a client evaluation panel.
- Design and articulate AI governance frameworks for clients adopting agentic and AI-driven systems, using Devenex's execution model as the reference architecture.
- Independently build the commercial costing, or job order costing, for each proposal, and ensure it is reviewed by the correct internal stakeholders, including delivery, finance, legal, and practice leads, before submission.
- Present and defend proposal content directly with client technical stakeholders, procurement teams, and evaluation committees.
- Build and maintain deep technical fluency across the Apigee, GCP, Gemini Enterprise, and Devenex platforms, and how each maps to real client environments across SSA markets.
- Develop a personal network of client technical decision-makers, procurement contacts, delivery stakeholders, and partner contacts across priority markets.
- Represent Abacus at industry forums, partner briefings, and client workshops across the region, building the region's brand and its bench of technical champions.
- Support account teams during contract negotiation with technical clarifications, scope definition, and risk input.
Required Experience & Skills
- 5 to 8+ years in pre-sales, solutions engineering, or technical consulting, ideally within a systems integrator, consultancy, or enterprise technology vendor.
- Working technical knowledge of API management platforms (Apigee or equivalent), cloud infrastructure (Google Cloud strongly preferred), and AI governance or execution control concepts for agentic and AI-driven systems.
- A demonstrated, personal track record of writing and structuring winning technical proposals and RFP responses, with strong original solutioning ability.
- Proven ability to build commercial costings and job order pricing for technical proposals independently, and to navigate internal approval processes without close oversight.
- An excellent, evidenced track record of stakeholder management, across client technical, commercial, and executive audiences, and across internal delivery, finance, and legal functions.
- Excellent storytelling and communication skills: able to turn technical detail into a business narrative that lands with both C-level and technical audiences.
- Prior exposure to Telco and/or Banking and Financial Services environments is strongly preferred.
- Self-driven, with the ability to operate independently and own the full proposal lifecycle end to end, with minimal day-to-day direction.
- Comfortable operating in a relationship-led, network-dependent commercial environment, of the kind typical of enterprise and government sales cycles in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly across SSA markets.
- Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business Informatics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
A Note on How We Solution
This is a hands-on solutioning role. The candidate's proposals and technical narratives must reflect their own judgment, technical reasoning, and industry insight. AI tools are a welcome and expected part of modern pre-sales work, for research, drafting support, and productivity, but they are a tool, not a substitute for the candidate's own thinking. Candidates who lean on AI to generate core solution designs or proposal content, rather than originate, shape, and personally defend it, will not succeed in this role.
What Success Looks Like
- Business opportunities identified by the commercial team are consistently converted into proposals that clients describe as clear, credible, and differentiated.
- Client technical stakeholders trust this person as a go-to voice for Abacus's platform and AI governance capability, independent of who else is in the room.
- Proposal costings are consistently accurate and move through internal approvals smoothly, with the right stakeholders consulted at the right time.
- A growing, durable personal network of client and partner contacts across priority SSA markets.
- Proposal quality and win rate improve as the candidate's market and platform knowledge deepens, with minimal need for oversight or rework.
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