Key Account Engineer

Location: Budapest, Hungary

Contract: Full-time

Reports to: Country Manager, SmartCorr Systems Kft.

Travel: Periodic international travel to client sites and regional offices (potential 0-5 short trips annually, based on clients’ demands)

Eligibility: Applicants must hold the right to work in Hungary

About SmartCorr Systems

SmartCorr Systems supplies corrosion control equipment to the oil and gas industry, including cathodic protection systems, corrosion monitoring instrumentation and chemical injection packages. The company operates across the Middle East, Asia and North America, and is now establishing its European base in Budapest.

We work with a deliberately flat structure. Decisions are made quickly, colleagues are accessible regardless of title, and matters can be raised directly with management rather than passed through layers of approval.

Purpose of the role

We are looking for an engineer to own our client relationships end to end.

Our clients are technical organizations, and the relationship is held by whoever can answer their questions properly. The role holder is the single point of contact for a group of accounts and stays with each one across the whole cycle: understanding the requirement, agreeing the solution with our technical team, following the project through manufacture and delivery, resolving whatever technical issues arise along the way, and remaining the client's contact afterwards.

The role holder is supported on both sides. A dedicated technical team defines the solution and produces the engineering content; a commercial team sets pricing and commercial terms. What we need from this position is the person who holds the client, knows what they need, brings the right colleagues in at the right moment, and makes sure nothing falls between them.

This is not a sales position and carries no new-business target. What we are asking for is technical credibility and reliable follow-through, because that is what keeps this kind of client.

Key responsibilities

Own the client relationship

• Act as the focal point of contact for an assigned group of clients, from first technical discussion through to long-term support
• Build working relationships with client engineering, operations and procurement teams, so that the company is known and trusted at more than one level
• Develop an understanding of each client's installations, operating conditions, upcoming projects and maintenance cycles
• Keep a clear record of client requirements, decisions and correspondence, so that account knowledge belongs to the company and not only to one individual

Understand the requirement and bring in the right people

• Take part in technical meetings with client engineers, online and on site, and discuss requirements and application detail in real depth
• Capture site and process data — fluid composition, temperature, pressure, flow regime, pipeline geometry and existing protection arrangements — and translate it into a clear brief for our technical team
• Brief our technical team, then review what comes back against what the client asked for, and challenge it where the two do not match
• Present the proposed solution to the client and explain the reasoning behind it, drawing the technical team into the conversation where the detail requires it
• Handle the clarifications that follow, routing the genuinely specialized ones to the colleague best placed to answer

Follow the project through

• Follow assigned projects from order placement through manufacture, testing, delivery and close-out, keeping the client informed at each stage
• Maintain the open issue and action register for each project, with a named owner and a due date against every item, and pursue each item to a documented resolution
• Handle technical queries, deviation requests and non-conformances, and ensure agreed changes are reflected consistently in specifications, drawings and documentation
• Coordinate client document submissions and approvals, and support inspection and factory acceptance testing where required
• Intervene early when a date is at risk, and give the client notice rather than explanation after the fact

Meetings and communication

• Chair and attend client meetings, including kick-off, progress review and technical clarification meetings
• Prepare agendas in advance, issue minutes promptly, and confirm actions, owners and dates in writing
• Carry the day-to-day commercial dialogue with the client, covering scope changes, schedule impact and their consequences, working with our commercial team, who set pricing and terms
• Give the commercial team the client context they need, and make sure the client receives a clear answer rather than a delay
• Report project and account status to management, stating position, risk and required decisions plainly

Stay with the account afterwards

• Follow up after delivery and commissioning to confirm performance and resolve technical queries
• Arrange technical support, spares and service where required
• Remain in regular contact between projects, so that the client comes to us first when the next requirement arises

Internal coordination

• Act as the coordination point between clients and engineering and operations colleagues in other regions and time zones
• Work closely with our Budapest business coordinator, who handles enquiry logging, quotation compilation, order processing and export documentation
• Escalate promptly and directly where a commitment made to a client is at risk

Essential requirements

The first requirement below is the one we will not compromise on. Industry background matters less to us than genuine engineering grounding.

• An engineering background: a degree in engineering or a related technical discipline, or substantial hands-on experience with mechanical production equipment, industrial machinery or comparable technical products
•  A minimum of three years in a client-facing technical role, such as key account engineering, technical sales support, applications engineering, project engineering or customer project management, gained with an equipment manufacturer, engineering contractor or industrial supplier
• The ability to read and work with engineering documentation, including specifications, datasheets, drawings and process diagrams
• Fluent professional English, written and spoken. English is our working language with clients and colleagues internationally, and the role holder must be able to lead a technical meeting, negotiate commercial detail and issue clear, accurate minutes in English
• Demonstrable experience of driving open technical items to closure and of holding colleagues, suppliers and clients to agreed dates
• Confidence in unplanned technical discussion: able to establish what a client needs and to represent the company credibly without deferring every question
• The ability to work through specialist colleagues: to brief them accurately, to judge whether what comes back answers the question, and to bring them into a client conversation at the right moment
• Methodical documentation habits and a low tolerance for loose ends
• The right to work in Hungary, and the ability to travel internationally, including to the Middle East, Asia and North Americal
• Sound commercial judgement, and the discretion appropriate to pricing and contractual information

Desirable

• Experience in oil and gas, energy or process industries. Candidates from other technical equipment sectors are equally welcome to apply
• Knowledge of corrosion control, cathodic protection, corrosion monitoring, pipeline integrity or chemical injection
• Experience of vendor document control, inspection and test plans and factory acceptance testing
• Hungarian language, or an additional language
• Experience supporting a newly established entity or a growing office

Working arrangements

• Based at our Budapest office, with reasonable flexibility
• Potential Periodic international travel to client sites and to our regional offices, including the Middle East, Asia or North America
•  Regular working contact across time zones, which requires some flexibility in daily hours

What we offer

• Ownership of client relationships in full, rather than a narrow segment of the process
• A technical team and a commercial team behind you, so the role is about holding the client well rather than doing everything alone
• A flat structure in which colleagues respond quickly, and matters can be escalated directly to management where required
•  Exposure to international projects across the Middle East, Asia and North America
• Support toward professional certification

Application process

Candidates are invited to submit a curriculum vitae together with a covering note describing a client or project they carried through from first technical discussion to completion, the technical issues they had to resolve along the way, their experience of meetings and correspondence in English, and their notice period.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and we aim to respond within one week.