Presales Solutions Architect (Federal)

About the position

The Sterling Sales Engineer (SE) will work closely with Sales Account Managers in a pre-sales technical role configuring solutions to meet specific customer technology needs, showcasing product solutions, setting up product demonstrations, and explaining features and value of technology solutions to customers. The Sales Engineer will be a key partner in the sales cycle and interact with customers both over the phone and on site to build trust and act as a trusted advisor for Sterling's customers. Additionally, the Sales Engineer will identify, research and present industry solutions related to client devices, wireless and wired networking, servers, storage, cloud infrastructures and data centers for customers. As part of the team, the Sales Engineer will develop technical sales strategies for deeply complex and large organizations operating on behalf of and in tandem with Commercial, SLED and Government agencies, while articulating the value of Sterling to these customers and industry peers. We are looking for a high caliber technical thought leader in the areas of AI, ML, HPC, storage, compute & infrastructure that can accelerate our growth by inspiring and enabling individual contributors to perform at high levels.

Responsibilities

• Confidently articulate features and value of technology solutions to customers.
• Configure products according to specifications.
• Ensure any RFP responses are technically acceptable and profitable.
• Build deep relationships with key customer decision makers.
• Develop and perform technical presentations to customers, partners, and prospects.
• Participate regularly in industry training and seek and maintain certifications to keep up to date on relevant competitive solutions, products, and services.
• Provide technical guidance to businesses on forward looking technologies.
• Build partner relationships with key technology vendors and OEMs.
• Participate in account planning and QBRs with sales and sales leadership.

Requirements

• Minimum of 5 years of experience as a Pre-Sales Engineer, Systems Engineer, or related customer-facing role.
• Strong understanding of virtualization technologies, including hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, and Citrix.
• Knowledge of storage architecture, including SANs, NAS, and software-defined storage.
• In-depth knowledge of network architecture, including SDN and network virtualization.
• Desire to track AI/ML technology trends and understand AI models and algorithms.
• Familiarity with Python, R, Java and TensorFlow/PyTorch.
• Strong understanding of security principles, including authentication, authorization, and encryption.
• Familiarity with cloud computing technologies, including AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, Gov Clouds.
• Good understanding of cost optimization techniques.
• Ability to communicate, coordinate, and work effectively with sales, engineering, leadership, and services delivery teams.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to apply critical thinking and empirical evidence to solve problems.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, DataBricks and other AI vendors.
• High level familiarity with security, cloud, and services.

Benefits

• Equal Opportunity Employer.