Intel Finland: A Global Player In Wireless Network Sales

Meet Sami Sinisalo, an Account Manager at Intel Finland. After living and working abroad, Sami returned home, joining Intel in the Sales and Marketing Group. Read on to learn about Sami’s work, favorite part of the job, and why Intel Finland is now a global leader in Wireless Network sales.  

What does your team do?

I’m member of Intel’s account team dedicated to our customer Nokia. I’m responsible for the sales of Intel technology and a variety of processing solutions for Nokia’s Mobile Networks business group. Our team also sells datacenter, cloud and IP network processing solutions, including a mix of Intel CPUs, FPGAs, custom SoCs, connectivity solutions, and associated software and services.

What is your team like?

Most of my colleagues and I are part of the Intel Sales and Marketing Group organization, but we get a lot of support from other parts of Intel, for example, key product lines and the hardware and software engineering units. Some of those resources are co-located with us here in Finland.

Our team is fairly international as we engage with global customers throughout Asia, Europe and North America, but due to Nokia’s headquarter location and wide presence in Finland, most of us are based there. Our local office is only a few miles away from Nokia HQ in the town of Espoo, and we work there together with close to a hundred Intel R&D employees.

How did you land at Intel?

I joined Intel at end of 2014 through the acquisition of a networking solutions division of another semiconductor company. The driver for Intel’s acquisition was to get more involved in the wireless networks business with market leading system OEMs like Nokia. Since then, we’ve done rather well and have grown our business to hundreds of millions of dollars annually by combining our previous know-how, relationships and designs with innovations and new products developed by Intel.  

What does your ordinary day look like?

Due to COVID-19, we are still working mostly at our home offices, so I do have a lot of calls internally and with various customer teams around the world. In normal circumstances, we have many travelers coming to visit for technical and business meetings and workshops, plus we’ve taken our customer teams over to various Intel R&D sites and the headquarters in Santa Clara on a regular basis. So, before the global restrictions applied in early 2020, I traveled and spent quite a bit of time with customers face-to-face.

What do you like the most about your job?

As an Account Manager selling complex technology solutions, one needs to plan and prepare many things well in advance and proactively drive the engagements and work between your own company and customer stakeholders at all organizational levels—even up to the company CEOs. And yet, despite all the great planning and joint development efforts and preparations, there are always new—and many times totally unexpected—things happening internally and with the customer, so it’s not boring or quiet in this line of work. 

Sales management of high tech is almost like sports—you need to have a team of hand-picked individuals with special skills, and they need to play their part in coordination with others. In my role, I feel almost like a coach of a sports team full of talented athletes and supporting staff, and my job is to make them prepare and play well as a unified team in order to score more goals than our opponents.

What are three reasons why it’s interesting to work at Intel Finland?

Intel Finland has two sites, one in Espoo in the capital area near Helsinki, and the other site is in Tampere, which is a growing and rather technology-oriented town around 200 kilometers north of Helsinki. At the Espoo site, there’s an interesting mix of international employees mostly in R&D jobs and handful of us in sales.

Intel is a great company and an iconic brand of course, and it’s a well-established regional and global employer. Here in Finland, we have nice office facilities, good working conditions and a bunch of great colleagues to work with.

Third and probably the most important aspect is my own scope of work around fast evolving wireless networks and leading-edge silicon technology. Continuous learning, personal development and teamwork are essential when leading business with a large, technology-oriented customer like Nokia.  

What are the most interesting benefits that Intel Finland offers?

Our offices and facilities are nice and conveniently located, and office services are working very well. Based on my experience, Intel is a fair employer with competitive employee benefits and career opportunities.

What makes for an ideal job candidate for the Sales and Marketing Group?

In sales, and especially at the customer interface, one needs to be innovative, motivated and self-driven. You also need to have the right mix of technical, business and people skills to build and nurture fruitful relationships with your supporting organizations and with customers in both good and not-so-good times.  

Interested in joining us? Check out all jobs at Intel Finland.