Senior Sales Engineer

Company Description

John Crane, a business of Smiths Group, is a global leader in mission-critical flow control solutions for energy and process industries that enable efficient and sustainable operations. Our products include mechanical seals and systems, couplings, filtration systems, and predictive digital monitoring technologies. 

We have a global network of more than 200 sites in over 50 countries and employ more than 6,000 people worldwide. We partner with our customers to help them keep their operations safe, reduce downtime, improve efficiency, and meet the latest environmental standards. 

John Crane is part of Smiths Group. For over 170 years, Smiths has been pioneering progress by engineering for a better future. We serve millions of people every year, helping to create a safer, more efficient, productive, and better-connected world across four global markets: energy, security & defence, space & aerospace, and general industrial. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, Smiths employs approximately 16,000 colleagues in over 50 countries. 

Job Description

The Senior Sales Engineer is responsible for developing and executing sales strategies to drive profitable growth within the petrochemical, chemical, energy, and industrial sectors across the Secunda region. This includes identifying upgrade, retrofit, aftermarket, and reliability improvement opportunities, managing strategic customer relationships, providing technical solutions, and ensuring alignment between customer operational requirements and John Crane capabilities.

•Develop and execute regional growth strategies with a defined short, medium, and long-term opportunity pipeline.

•Maintain and expand strategic relationships with Sasol, Natref, Air Liquide, Safripol, Brochem, and other key industrial customers.

•Identify and convert upgrade, retrofit, reliability, and aftermarket opportunities.

•Drive growth of mechanical seals, Dry Gas Seals, filtration systems, couplings, support systems, and reliability services.

•Maintain a high level of forecast accuracy through effective CRM and opportunity management.

•Develop and implement account plans for strategic customers.

•Conduct regular customer visits and engagement sessions to identify future opportunities.

•Support customer reliability initiatives through application reviews, failure analysis, root cause investigations, and technical recommendations.

•Coordinate quotations, contracts, orders, and customer support activities with internal teams.

•Monitor competitor activity and market developments to identify displacement and growth opportunities.

•Assist with contract negotiations, pricing strategies, and commercial discussions.

•Support annual budget achievement through effective sales execution and opportunity conversion.

Qualifications

•Strong understanding of rotating equipment, including pumps, compressors, mixers, agitators, steam turbines, and auxiliary equipment.

•Working knowledge of mechanical seals, Dry Gas Seals, filtration systems, couplings, bearing protection, and support systems.

•Experience within petrochemical, chemical, refining, mining, or heavy industrial sectors.

•Understanding of maintenance, reliability, and asset management principles.

•Ability to identify and develop upgrade, retrofit, and reliability improvement opportunities.

•Strong commercial, negotiation, and relationship management skills.

•Minimum 5-8 years of technical sales experience within industrial markets.

Additional Information

With colleagues stretching across the globe, we are proud of our diversity. To foster inclusivity, we run employee resource groups (ERGs) to provide a safe space for employees to connect and support each other. Our cross-business ERGs include Veterans, Pride Network, Black Employee Network, Women@Work Network, and Neurodiversity. 

Across our company, we recognize excellence, culminating in the Smiths Excellence Awards, our annual celebration of the most extraordinary activities, people, and projects that best showcase our strengths and help drive our business forward. We announce these on our annual Smiths Day, a global celebration of Smiths around our network. 

Join us for a great career with competitive compensation and benefits, while helping engineer a better future. 

We believe that different perspectives and backgrounds are what make a company flourish. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment regardless of color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, economic status, disability, age, or any other legally protected characteristics. We are proud to be an inclusive company with values grounded in equality and ethics, where we celebrate, support, and embrace diversity.

At no time during the hiring process will Smiths Group, nor any of our recruitment partners ever request payment to enable participation – including, but not limited to, interviews or testing. Avoid fraudulent requests by applying jobs directly through our career’s website (Careers - Smiths Group plc)

• Grade: 10
• Employee Group: Permanent
• Global Region: Middle East Africa