Solutions Consultant

Title: Solutions Consultant
Location: Lowry Mill, Lees Street, Manchester, M27 6DB

Working pattern: Hybrid – 3 days per week in the office
Salary: £70,000-£79,000
Hours: Full-time, 37.5 hours per week
Reporting to: Head of Technical Services

Dataspire partners with schools and multi-academy trusts to build dependable, high-performing technology environments. Our work helps schools operate securely and efficiently, while enabling teachers and students to make the most of technology.

We are looking for a Solutions Consultant to design technology solutions that help schools and trusts modernise, secure and improve their IT environments. You will work directly with customers to understand their needs and develop solutions across networking, cloud services, security, safeguarding, identity, endpoint management and infrastructure platforms.

You will collaborate closely with Sales, Implementation Services and Systems Operations to ensure solutions are technically sound, commercially viable and aligned with education-sector best practice, while supporting customers throughout the design and proposal process.

This is a customer-focused technical consulting role for someone who enjoys understanding business challenges, designing practical technology solutions and helping educational organisations make informed technology decisions that deliver long-term value.

As a Solutions Consultant, you will act as the technical bridge between our customers’ educational goals and Dataspire’s solutions. You will lead technical discovery and design end-to-end solutions covering networks,cloud platforms, identity, security, safeguarding, endpoints, backup and management tooling for standard and moderately complex school or MAT opportunities.

You will work directly with customers and internal teams to ensure your designs are technically sound, commercially viable and perfectly aligned with education-sector standards. You will collaborate closely with Sales, Implementation Services and Systems Operations to ensure a smooth transition from proposal to live service.

• Lead technical discovery workshops with IT leads, school leaders and internal stakeholders including site assessments and current-state documentation.
• Design end-to-end solutions across networks, wireless, servers, virtualisation, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, identity, security, safeguarding, endpoints, backup and management tooling using Dataspire reference architectures and DfE, NCSC and KCSIE guidance.
• Produce high-quality proposal content including solution overviews, HLDs, scope boundaries, assumptions, acceptance criteria and SOW input.
• Work with Sales and Finance to size, price and package solutions balancing commercial constraints with scalability, supportability and margin.
• Present solution options clearly to both technical audiences and non-technical school leadership.
• Collaborate with Implementation Services before proposal submission to validate deliverability, effort and sequencing.
• Ensure Systems Operations considerations (monitoring, backup, patching, security operations) are included in every design.
• Maintain and improve the solutions knowledge base, design patterns, templates and handover packs.
• Capture lessons learned from delivered projects and feed improvements back into standards.

• Network and connectivity: HPE Aruba, Cisco Meraki, Ubiquiti.
• Perimeter and edge security:
  Smoothwall, Securly, Barracuda, Fortinet.
• Servers and virtualisation:
  Microsoft Windows Server, Hyper-V, VMware (ESXi, vCenter), Dell EMC, HPE Pro Liant.
• Collaboration and productivity:
  Microsoft 365, Google Workspace for Education.
• Identity and directory services:
  Active Directory, Azure AD, Entra , IAM Cloud.
• St…