Principal Sales Engineer

Principal Sales Engineer - Insurance -Fynapse

Team: Fynapse GTM

Reports to: Global Head of Sales Engineering

Location: Boston

Travel: Frequent - global travel and in-person executive presence are core to this role

Level: Individual Contributor

WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS

Insurance is one of Fynapse's priority verticals, and the deals in it look nothing like a generic enterprise sale. A Tier 1 insurer consolidating dozens of legal entities, an actuarial and finance function trying to close under IFRS17 and USGAAP, a claims and reserving process that has to reconcile back to the general ledger - these are deals where technical-accounting credibility is key to the sales strategy, and where getting the architecture, the regulatory narrative and the commercial construct wrong in board-level conversation costs the deal.

This role is a senior technical voice of truth on Fynapse's largest, most complex insurance pursuits. You are not a technical resource brought in on request - you are jointly accountable with the Account Executive for the full opportunity, from qualification and value framing through to commercial construct and delivery handover. You set the standard the rest of the presales organisation works to, not just for insurance, but for how Fynapse runs its most strategic deals globally.

WHAT YOU’LL OWN

Deal leadership and commercial accountability

• Operate across New Business, Account Management and Partner-led motions on the largest, most complex insurance pursuits.

• Co-own the commercial construct with the AE - deal shaping, multi-year commercial models, partner economics - carrying equal accountability for the commercial outcome, not just the technical one.

• Challenge commercial models, motion choices and deal-selection decisions at the most senior level, including where a deal shouldn't be pursued.

• Shape multi-year transformation roadmaps across the largest insurance installed-base accounts.

Solution strategy, demonstrations and architecture

• Drive multi-use-case transformation demonstrations across the largest insurance carriers and set the standard for demo and POC approach that the wider pre-sales organisation follows.

• Co-own solution strategy (with the AE) for multi-region, multi-product insurance transformations - general insurance, life, reinsurance, claims, actuarial and finance consolidation - and shape the multi-year technical and architectural roadmap for strategic accounts.

• Maintain deep architectural understanding across the whole Fynapse platform, not just the insurance-relevant modules, so the roadmap conversation never boxes itself in.

Bid and RFP leadership

• Set response strategy on the largest global insurance bids - agree win themes with the AE and Sales leadership, contribute to bid/no-bid decisions, and personally own the most complex architecture, security and regulatory (Solvency II, IFRS 17, data residency) sections.

• Build the reusable insurance bid content - architecture narratives, regulatory responses, reference answers - that the global organisation bids from, so good answers don't get rewritten from scratch every time.

Value selling and business case

• Set the value-selling standard for insurance deals: build reusable value frameworks and benchmark data specific to carriers' cost and risk drivers (close cycle cost, reconciliation effort, regulatory reporting cost, cost of delay).

• Co-own multi-year, multi-workstream business cases with the AE on the largest transformation programmes and personally defend them at board and C-suite level.

Qualification and deal health (MEDDPICC)

• Codify MEDDPICC validation into repeatable standards used across regions and partners on insurance deals.

• Define the escalation thresholds and deal-risk signals Sales leadership uses to make stage and deal-selection calls.

• Act as senior product authority on deal health for the most complex insurance opportunities - expected to question qualification at any level, including with Sales leadership, and to have that assessment carry formal weight.

Partnership and ecosystem

• Lead the pre-sales relationship with global GSIs and insurance-ecosystem partners (advisory, implementation, actuarial), orchestrating co-sell motions.

• Challenge partner and internal assumptions on the largest joint pursuits at executive level, including where a partner's qualification of a deal doesn't stand up.

Proactive SE partnership

• Set the standard for proactive partnering with Sales and Account Management on the most complex, highest-value insurance accounts - resourced deliberately, not reactively.

• Hold equal-footing conversations with senior AEs and AMs, including challenging their read on a deal, and be valued for doing so.

Product, industry and competitive authority

• Bring expert-level insurance financial-transformation knowledge - actuarial reporting, claims and reserving, reinsurance accounting, regulatory reporting - and apply it across the world's largest carriers.

• Influence the Fynapse product roadmap through insurance customer and market insight; represent Aptitude in insurance-sector executive forums and industry events.

• Define the category narrative for how Fynapse positions against insurance-specific alternatives and adjacent ecosystems, equip the field with the client-relevant "so what" for each differentiator, and personally handle the hardest competitive, commercial and roadmap objections in board-level settings.

Forecast and voice of truth

• Co-own forecast confidence with the AE on the largest insurance deals - validate Sales, AM and partner-sourced pipeline accurately in CRM across long, complex cycles.

• Act as the senior pre-sales voice of truth: challenge commit calls at leadership level, define the deal-risk signals that trigger escalation, and be sought out for an unvarnished view.

Handover to delivery

• Set the handover standard for the most complex insurance programmes - align multi-year roadmap commitments with Delivery leadership.

• Intervene where a pursuit is creating delivery risk, or where scoping assumptions won't survive contact with implementation.

Stakeholder and partner management

Build durable executive relationships across insurance accounts and partners that persist beyond individual deals.

Coach the wider organisation on stakeholder mapping and multi-threading in complex insurance buying groups.

HOW YOU’LL WORK

• Insurance-first, platform-fluent. You go deep enough into a carrier's finance operating model to be credible with a Chief Actuary or Group CFO, and you can move that credibility across general insurance, life and reinsurance.

• Global, in person. Executive relationships in insurance are built face to face. Frequent international travel and executive-level presence are expected, not occasional.

• Sought out, not assigned. You're pulled into the largest insurance deals for judgment, not headcount - this is a force-multiplier role, not a staffing pool.

WHO YOU ARE

Essential

• Direct pre-sales, sales, consulting or delivery experience specifically in insurance (carrier-side or vendor-side).

• Deep, credible knowledge of insurance finance operations - actuarial reporting, claims and reserving, reinsurance accounting, and regulatory reporting under IFRS 17, US GAAP and Solvency II (or equivalent regimes).

• A track record of owning the technical side of the largest, most complex enterprise deals - jointly accountable for the commercial outcome, not just the demo.

• Expert-level financial-transformation and enterprise-architecture knowledge, applicable across the world's largest organisations.

• Fluent in MEDDPICC (or equivalent) as a qualification and deal-health discipline, with the standing to challenge Sales leadership on it.

• Experience leading or personally authoring complex, regulated RFP responses.

• Comfortable holding equal-footing, sometimes challenging, conversations with senior AEs, AMs and Sales leadership.

• A track record of executive-level stakeholder management, including board and C-suite business-case defence.

Desirable

• Experience with global GSI or ecosystem partner co-sell motions.

• Actuarial, accounting or insurance professional qualification (or equivalent practical depth).

• Experience shaping product or competitive strategy through customer and market insight and representing a vendor in industry forums.

About Fynapse and Aptitude Software

Aptitude Software has spent 50 years building financial software for large, complex enterprises - 100+ enterprise clients including T-Mobile, RBC, Transamerica, Chubb and Lloyds, across six countries, listed on AIM. Fynapse is our next-generation Finance ERP and the centre of our growth strategy, backed by advisory, implementation and co-sell relationships with all four of the Big Four.