The job of partner engineering

Giovanni Laquidara: So I will tell you about the job of partner engineering, so the partner engineering role role. So, yeah, with this, I'm Giovanni Giovanni Lakvidara. I'm a developer advocate in Huawei and also partner engineering. So I'm doing both the job. So that we will see that there are difference between the two.

And my past experience is about software engineering, especially in mobile development, Android development, and VR and AR. VR and AR was one of my last passion because I think this would be, like, the next computer platform for the future. And even I lack a lot of contributing communities, sharing contents, helping the other developers to achieve their their goals. So I really like to share my experience. So that's the reason why I also choose to move to change my career from totally software developer job to towards developer advocacy and part of engineering role.

So let's see for let's see the the problem. I mean, what problem that part engineering can solve. So let's say that you or your company just created a super cool software product that can be an SDK, a new API, a software as a service. You use that all the latest and trial methodologies to plan it. You just was thinking about the the this product, and you were car carefully selected all the feature that the that you think that the user needs and wants.

And you try to understand all the feature to to make your project super scalable using the last architecture that you read about and to design your product. And then you have to develop it for sure. So you spend a lot of time calling it or your tech team spend a lot of time calling it with the last modern frameworks that you can imagine, a massive coverage of unit test and test and generic test. So, yeah, it is good quality of your software and a lot of great configuration tools, but you have a problem now. You have to sell it outside.

Yeah. And this is a kinda difficult job, and you and you that are coming from the technical side of the of of the the job, you often don't don't know how to communicate with the people to sell a product. And you need to communicate this. You need to communicate the right value of our software product or your API to the people. And in this case, like, communicating the right value, the people can understand.

The final user can understand if there really needs or not, and then they can buy it. So luckily, you cannot do everything, and there is a role for this. There is a role to sell your product, and this is more the the job of the business developer. So the business developers does in this slide, per definition, it's it would be the person that is representing the front of your companies or your company or your startup, and would be the one that is that has the responsibility to sell, to have a sales strategy, and to make sure that all the to make sure that this strategy will follow to the the project and your company to be sustainable in in financial terms. So that means that in the end, this is this role is very important because it will bring your company to lie.

It it will it will hallow your company to to live for a long term. So, yes, you need to earn money to make everything works, but there is still a problem. I mean, yeah, you can have business developer try to selling to sell carpet to the people, but, yeah, you have this problem that often the business developers cannot really understand the technology. They don't they know about the sales domain, but they don't know about the technology the technology, and they don't know about the deep, softer stacks that is inside your product. And often, they don't know how to speak the same language with the technical team of the partner.

So of the in the other companies or other startups that you have to sell your products. And so this is really hard so sometimes it can be really hard to communicate the real feature of your products. And that's the reason why you need another role that is a sort of support role, a a bridge. Let's say that it's a bridge between the technical side of your companies of your company and the technical side of the company the the technical side the technical team of your partner. And this role so the role that is acting as a bridge between the two technical teams is the role of partner engineer.

So what is it? I like to think of partner engineer as a an engineer, so a technical person that is working for a company, but is supporting the company of your partner. So let's, I mean, the partner engineer is the one that is merging with the technology team with the the the partner. And the things is that the main the main feature of this role are the one listening in the slide. So he have so the partner engineers needs to ensure that the the your product, your API, your SDK is actually used in the most correct way as possible.

It helped the partner to expand his business using your product, but even proposing new solution. And this new solution can be integrated with your products, both of Just don't forget that you are working for a company that we will have to sell the product, the SDK, the API, the software as a service. And also, your company thinks can improve the business adding feature to this product. Another another skill, another responsibility of partner engineer would be, like, the one that's offer the partner a better developer experience. So the best developer experience as possible.

Don't forget that as a as a company, you are offering a product, it could be an SDK API, but these products can have some bugs, cannot maybe I mean, if you are speaking about a tool library that is offered to developers, can sometimes don't don't really offer a super cool developer experience. So you need to understand what is the right way to help the partner to achieve this, so to achieve the better as possible developer experience. And even I'm not another important feature of this role is to you will be able you need to be able to gather the feedback from the partner and take it back from the for toward the product team that will improve the product that you are selling and your company is selling. Another thing is that you will advocate inside your companies about the needs of the partner. So let's say that the partner needs some special feature or needs some special tools.

Maybe you can advocate with your internal team in your company to create these tools. And in this way, make both your company and the partner company. What skill do the partner engineers needs? So it's a role that is not completely technical, not completely in the sales strategy, and not completely in the communication on developer advocacy strategies. It's a role that needs to have a lot of skills.

So you have to have technical knowledge. You have to have the domain knowledge. Let's say that you are working for a company specializing in mobile development. Yeah. You need to understand that vertical.

Virtual reality or mentality, so you have to be expert in the domain. But if you don't know a lot of this domain, this is not a problem because another skill that you need to have is the fast learning. You have to learn fast the things that you need for your job. And this is something that developers really have because they are constantly studying new frameworks, new APIs. So this is something that a developer can really have.

It sometimes doesn't know that you have OSHA. You have one of the most important skill if you have to be a partner engineer, you have to have empathy. So we need to understand. You need to be in you need to wear the the dress of your partner. So you need to understand this point of view.

You have to have go you have to have good communication skill. So you have to express clear your opinion, bright, clear your content, your idea, and brighten and support the partner and help the parts and the partner in a clear way. You have to have willingness to help. Yeah. You as a part engineer a part engineer, you will help.

So you have to be happy to help, and this will be one of the most important this is one of the most important skill. And you have to be a lot of passions. I mean, you have to have a lot of functions because let's say that's maybe you will found some bugs of your products or maybe you will face some interruption of services or software as a service or or you are to the you you will have to deal to deal with bad documentation or, like I said, just bugs. So you have to be patient and you because you will represent the technical part of your company to the partner that you are supporting. So a lot of passion to support this.

The first contact that you will have and have with your partner, it will be so important. It will be it's like the first impression that you will do with your that you will do towards your partner. And this often will start as a meeting as a meeting a lot of meeting together with the business development or right now at the moment, like, an online meeting with them. And this could be as long as there are business development, you in this meeting can be in a room full of salespeople. So be aware that they are not only all tech technologists or developers.

And the first thing that I want to suggest you that's I mean, you need to remember these simple tips. So make sure that you introduce yourself in the meeting in a clear way. So, like I say, clear communication. You have to be clear about who you are, and you have to communicate clear about your role. Make sure that they understand that you would be their technical reference from now on.

Perfect. They need to understand you, and you have to speak it clearly. Make sure to connect with the tech members in the meeting. So there would be a lot of business developer in the first meeting, but for sure, there would be a technical person. Make sure to know him or her.

Be nice with them. Remember the name. This is very important. It is things that is always always important everywhere. So you need to remember the name and write it down then con their contacts because you need to contact them sooner or later and you to start the activities.

And remember to be to write a follow my follow-up email or to be in the follow-up email of your business developer and introduce yourself again in the email and and kick off the active the technical activities proposing a new meeting this time with all the technical papers. And also agree on a common channel to use for communication because, yes, the channel is important. You can use the partner channel. That could be email, call, or whatever software instant messages software they are using. But take in account that if you have have to support multiple partners, maybe support you can support multiple communication channel, and this can be a mess.

So in the case of you, we'll have multiple partners to support. I suggest you to create to use in force, if you want to say force, a communication channel. That could be an instant messaging. Make me create a Discord servers for yourself or to support the partners and invite the partners the partners there. Speak about what are the tools, the most important tool that you will use in your normal day job as a partner engineer?

So the first important the first and most important tool that you can use is the calendar. Yes. The calendar. You is why all the most important tool. You will need to arrange everything and be sure that all the meeting, all the assignments, the workshop that you will do, the activity you will do with one or more partners will be planned, and you will need to remember this when they are.

So make sure that you are using a really a good calendar. You can use pen a paper calendar, but for sure you will soon need a calendar that's will support, like, cloud sharing because you can offer the possibility to the partner to book some of of your hours for a meeting, for a workshop, and so on. So this is one of the most important things. It's not a compiler. It's not a framework.

It's the calendar. Speaking about the tools, you need to be expert. The second the second more important tools to use is the tools that partner is using. So that's the reason why you need to be a fast learner. You you need to use the you need to familiarize with the your partner's tools.

And you will need to be very fast, and you need to always remember them. But always remember that one of the your most important deliverable will be the content, the message. Content is the king in here because you will help them. You will help the partner. And whatever message you will say to them, this will be your main deliverable, your main content.

And understand that this could be could be represented in many ways, like with presentation, with documents, even a call. Even a simple taking the phone and call the partner is a way to create a content. But make sure that if you're giving that, Make sure that you record it and write it down all the content. So that's it. What is the master plan of the partner engineer to increase to I mean, the what is the master plan to the partner engineer role?

Is to have to increase the business and get our feedbacks, like I said. So let's say that you will have to understand to increase the business, the low hanging what I I like to to say the low hanging fruits of the partner. So the weakest point of the partner, and then you can help them to fix and really try to suggest them a better way to to use to support them and to use a product. And, also, don't forget to gather feedback for your products. So reach for get ask feedback for bugs, ask feedback for extension of your products, and that's it.

I want to show you one of the last things. So in marketing, is a the HADA framework that is used to sell something, but you can use this one to into your daily job of auto engineering. So you can use the Haida framework to go in a funnel from attention to action just to just from identifying the pain point of your partner. So this is Create samples of demo code for your partners in interest. So understanding their interest.

Make sure that they have some they decide about using this feature. So compare your demos with other product or existing products. And in this, data is the king. So represent the data that are coming and comp show the comparison with data. And then after they decide to take action in it, so implement new feature from your product, you will start the proof of concept with them.

Don't forget that the partner engineering role is a role that is there to help. Help the partner, help your company to achieve the result. And don't forget this this is I think that I really like that is the best under effect so that the probability that a that a person will receive help decrease as the number of people in the group increase. So if the if the set of people to help is really big, you will not help them very much. So make sure to operate your daily role of partner engineer in small group.

Divide into small group and help us in small group. And the final quote that I'd like to give to you is this. In helping others, you will help yourself. Because in this role, you will gain a lot of knowledge. You will gain a lot of art and soft skill.

This role will also be good for personal branding because you will be the the one that help, and the people and the partner will remember also you. Thank you.

Speaker 2: That was wonderful. Yeah. Giovanni.

Giovanni Laquidara: Thank you.

Speaker 2: It time flies. Right? No. That was wonderful. Thank you so much.

We've actually got some questions here. First one's from Tamaul. Giovanni, how can dev advocates and partner engineers work together for the best shared customer experience? And, also, how can they make sure that they don't step on each other's toes?

Giovanni Laquidara: So the thing is that, like I said, the partner engineering is the one that is working close closely with a partner. The developer advocate is the one that is mainly creating content for the all the people that are using the products. So they are not really into each other, but they can collaborate because sometimes maybe a developer advocate can produce some content that the partner engineer can take and give to the partner and maybe customize it for the partner. So it's like, I see this goal as a pipeline. You know?

So there is the developer advocate for everyone, then there is the vertical of the partner engineer that is dedicated to the partner. So it's more you you are we will work with the partner. So, actually, it's this the difference.

Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you.

Giovanni Laquidara: Yep. Okay.

Speaker 3: I was gonna say, think we've got another question here in Yep. Discord from TC Merrick. Is is partner engineering the same as support engineering?

Giovanni Laquidara: So in a search so a lot of different companies decline partner engineering in a different way, like a developer advocate. So every company has its own vision. In Huawei, for instance, the support engineer is the partner engineer. In other companies, different. But I like to see that yes.

I mean, it it's a support the partner engineering is a support engineer that has also some sort of sales skills because he can find new feature to be proposed to the client, to the customer.

Speaker 3: Okay. Thanks. Well Thank you. I think so I'm I'm pausing slightly because I can see that Tamo is typing in Discord. Don't know if she has a a follow-up question.

But, look, what I'll say is oh, so there's someone else going with a question of this Jason says, does Partner Engineering compete with paid for solutions consulting?

Giovanni Laquidara: Sorry. Can you repeat it? I also didn't get you.

Speaker 3: Does Partner Engineering compete with paid for solutions consulting? So are you giving away Partner Engineering when you could be charging for it?

Giovanni Laquidara: The thing is the partner engineers is really important for your company because it will report and will ask the your internal company product team to improve the feature, to improve the product. So this is something that some this is something that sometime the consultative company are not doing. So this is a it's more a bridge.

Speaker 3: K. I think we got time for one more question, Ramon. Do you see Tamil's follow-up?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Giovanni, also often, we get the division between partner engineering doing work that has a clear revenue stream and DX or developer experience focusing on more exploratory inter integrations. I have some mixed feelings about that in terms of DX impact, so I'd love to hear if you have any perspectives about that.

Giovanni Laquidara: So, I mean, yeah, this is this is really it's even in the the things that I said before. So many companies has different vision of this role, of the advocacy role, of the part engineer role. So I think that's yeah. The part engineer has an important part. I mean, this role has an important part.

I mean, the the revenue streams has an important part in inside this role. So it's not only a support in helping the customer, but it's even trying to find new revenue stream for your companies. In the meanwhile, you are helping the partner. So, like, proposing new tools, proposing new feedback. So you need to be, like, the even the antenna to understand your partner needs.