Solution Architect

Job description
The Role
• The Solution Architect is responsible for supporting technical pre-sales opportunities. With a focus on pursuing opportunities, this will involve working with clients to define their requirements, demonstrate technologies and propose suitable solutions.
• Working in conjunction with the CSA sales teams, the Solution Architect will be responsible for producing all technical inputs required for qualified proposals (for example; proposal content, architecture diagrams, work statements, service estimates, bill of materials, assumptions/caveats). The Solution Architect may also retain ongoing involvement with certain key client engagements through design work, quality assurance / governance of deliverables from a technical standpoint and resolution of major architectural issues that are escalated.
• The Solution Architect will work particularly closely with the PMSA, Sales Operations, Client Services and Service Delivery teams, along with the consultants and engineers who deliver the solutions. Whilst post-sales delivery personnel and vendors can occasionally be leveraged as subject matter experts, the Solution Architect is expected to be predominately self-sufficient.

The Technologies
• The Solution Architect will have detailed working knowledge of most technologies below to fulfil the role:
• Physical and Virtual Server infrastructure – Rack Mounted and Blade Servers, VMware and HyperV Virtualisation
• Storage Solutions and Connectivity – DAS, NAS and SAN, SAS, Fibre Channel, iSCSI and Converged network architectures
• Hyper-converged – Scale out platforms
• Services – Solution Implementation, Managed Services
• The Solution Architect will have detailed working knowledge across the following vendors with respect to the technologies noted above:
• HP
• VMware
• Microsoft
• CommVault
• Citrix
• Cisco

The Capabilities

The ideal Solution Architect must maintain:
• A proven record of delivering technical pre-sales engagements to clients with exemplary attention to detail
• High quality solution design skills (architecture, bill of materials, work statements)
• A strong relationship with sales teams to prepare proposals and deliver presentations/demonstrations
• Commercial awareness and sound interpersonal, verbal, written and presentation skills
• An ability to work in a team, deliver quality outcomes, share knowledge and align with best practice
• A personal interest with ability to learn and understand new and emerging technologies and solutions
• HP Business Partner Solution Architect (BPSA) accreditation