Solutions Architect, Cloud

Description

The Solutions Architect, Cloud is a senior sales subject matter expert who shapes and closes complex cloud, hybrid cloud, and managed services opportunities for Ark. This is a client-facing role: you sit next to sellers on strategic pursuits, translate customer business outcomes into a differentiated Ark solution, and drive technical wins that align to our engineering, security, and operational standards.

Also note this role is hybrid remote and located in one of Ark Data Centers states.

• Lead technical discovery with prospects and customers across IT, application, security, and executive audiences; translate business drivers into cloud architecture options and a defensible recommendation.
• Design and price private cloud solutions across compute, storage, networking, backup, disaster recovery, security, and managed services.
• Own the technical narrative in customer meetings, executive briefings, whiteboarding sessions, and proof-of-concept engagements.
• Author solution architecture diagrams, bills of materials, Statements of Work, and the technical response for RFI / RFP / RFQ submissions.

• Partner with Account Executives as the technical co-owner of the opportunity; build pursuit strategy, competitive positioning, and close plans together.
• Drive TCO, ROI, and migration business-case models that quantify customer value and justify Ark’s pricing.
• Protect margin and standards: negotiate scope, non-standard requests, and exception approvals with delivery and product leaders.
• Push engineering and product on the essence of each deal solution, constructively challenging assumptions to land the best outcome for the customer, the standard, and the business.

• Serve as the internal SME on cloud, hybrid cloud, migration, and modernization topics for the sales organization.
• Maintain a dotted-line relationship with cloud engineering, platform, security, and operations; represent the customer voice into product and roadmap discussions.
• Contribute to reusable architecture patterns, reference designs, and enablement content that scale across the sales team.
• Mentor Account Executives and less-experienced technical resources on cloud solutioning, discovery, and executive communication.

• Represent Ark at industry events, customer advisory sessions, partner briefings, and executive round tables.
• Build relationships with strategic technology partners (ISVs, VARs, MSPs) that expand Ark’s cloud reach.

• 7+ years in pre-sales solutions architecture, cloud consulting, or senior cloud engineering, with direct exposure to the sales cycle.
• A track record of shaping and closing multi-million-dollar cloud, hybrid, or managed services deals in an enterprise or upper mid-market environment.
• Deep working knowledge of at least one major virtualization / private cloud stack (VMware, Nutanix, Hyper-V, Open Stack).
• Strong grounding in enterprise networking, storage, backup/DR, identity, and security architecture as applied to hybrid workloads.
• Executive-level presence: you can lead the room, whiteboard live, and defend architectural decisions under commercial and competitive pressure.
• Experience authoring SOWs, BOMs, and RFP responses that hold up through legal, delivery, and finance review.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field or equivalent experience.
• Extensive Nutanix expertise
• Industry certifications such as VCP / VCAP, or CCNP / CCIE.
• Experience selling alongside or into channel partners and system integrators.
• Familiarity with regulated workloads (HIPAA, PCI, FedRAMP, SOC
  2) and their impact on hybrid architecture.

• Salesforce for opportunity, quote, and pipeline hygiene, plus modern sales engineering tooling (CPQ, diagramming, collaboration).
• Microsoft: strong Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio (or equivalent) for modeling and solution documentation.

Customer-facing and travel-intensive. Expect 30-50% travel across the assigned region, with occasional national travel for strategic pursuits, executive briefings,…