Pre-Sales Manager - Japan (AI Infrastructure)

Location: Tokyo, Japan; hybrid work with travel across Japan as required

Company

hirify.global develops a scalable data platform for AI, machine learning, and high-performance data workloads.

What you will do

• Lead, coach, and grow the Systems Engineering team in Japan.
• Own regional solution architecture, proof-of-concept strategy, technical evaluations, benchmarks, and technical win plans.
• Partner with Sales leadership on regional strategy, pipeline development, and forecasting.
• Build technical relationships with enterprise customers, hyperscalers, research institutions, and HPC/AI-focused organisations.
• Develop the partner and channel ecosystem, enabling distributors and system integrators to position and support VAST solutions.
• Represent the Japan market to product and engineering teams and contribute to roadmap and localisation priorities.

Requirements

• Substantial pre-sales or Systems Engineering experience in enterprise infrastructure, including storage, data platforms, HPC, networking, or AI/ML infrastructure.
• People-leadership or team-lead experience, or clear readiness to enter a first formal management role.
• Strong technical depth in data storage, file and object protocols, Linux, virtualisation, and modern AI/data pipelines.
• Successful experience driving complex, high-value technical sales cycles in the Japanese enterprise market.
• Established relationships in Japan's enterprise, channel, or research/HPC communities.
• Business-level English and native-level Japanese, spoken and written, are essential.

Nice to have

• Experience with NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell, Weka, or similar competitive storage and data platforms.
• Exposure to AI/ML, GPU-accelerated computing, or large-scale HPC environments.
• Experience building or scaling a pre-sales team in a high-growth or start-up/scale-up environment.

Culture & Benefits

• Player-coach role combining technical leadership with direct customer engagement.
• Collaboration with Sales, product, and engineering teams across Japan and APAC.
• Opportunity to influence product roadmap and localisation priorities for the Japan market.
• Participation in industry events, executive briefings, and customer engagements.