Pre-sales Solutions Architect

Overview:
This is an incredible opportunity to be part of a company that has been at the forefront of AI and high-performance data storage innovation for over two decades. DataDirect Networks (DDN) is a global market leader renowned for powering many of the world's most demanding AI data centers, in industries ranging from life sciences and healthcare to financial services, autonomous cars, Government, academia, research and manufacturing.

**"DDN's A3I solutions are transforming the landscape of AI infrastructure." - IDC**

**_
“The real differentiator is DDN. I never hesitate to recommend DDN. DDN is the de facto name for AI Storage in high performance environments” - Marc Hamilton, VP, Solutions Architecture & Engineering | NVIDIA_**

DDN is the global leader in AI and multi-cloud data management at scale. Our cutting-edge data intelligence platform is designed to accelerate AI workloads, enabling organizations to extract maximum value from their data. With a proven track record of performance, reliability, and scalability, DDN empowers businesses to tackle the most challenging AI and data-intensive workloads with confidence.

Our success is driven by our unwavering commitment to innovation, customer-centricity, and a team of passionate professionals who bring their expertise and dedication to every project. This is a chance to make a significant impact at a company that is shaping the future of AI and data management.

Our commitment to innovation, customer success, and market leadership makes this an exciting and rewarding role for a driven professional looking to make a lasting impact in the world of AI and data storage.

**Job Description**:
**Pre-Sales Solutions Architect - India**
- Design solutions and proposals to meet customer-defined specifications,
- Help customers define solution specifications matching DDN products,
- Provide Proof of Concept (POC) and benchmarking support,
- Compare and contrast with competitive products to highlight DDN’s superior features & functionality
- Work with DDN engineering, professional services and sales teams to drive win ratio.

**Duties and Responsibilities**:
The duties and responsibilities for this role include but are not limited to;
- Pre-sales activity supporting HPC and AI customers.
- Assist in closing new business opportunities by gaining a thorough technical and business understanding of clients' needs and helping sales identify, qualify, and close new opportunities.
- Understand the sales process and how to utilize company resources to close accounts.
- Participate in customer-focused seminars, tradeshows, events, and training.
- Provide RFP responses, technical drawings, presentations, and recommendations.
- Acquire and maintain a thorough technical and procedural understanding of DDN Sales cycles, products/services and a thorough technical understanding of similar industries.
- Create of Bill of Materials of proposed solutions for DDN products and professional services.
- Ability to work with DDN Subject Matter Experts from different geographies and time zones.
- Ability to manage customer relationship post-sale, including strategy to close repeat business.

**Qualifications**:

- BSc or higher degree or equivalent

**PERSONAL SKILLS**:

- Ability to simplify and explain complex tasks, architectures and environments.
- Good written and oral communication skills. Must be able to develop and deliver presentations; connect and build a rapport with customers via phone, face to face meetings, and in written correspondences.
- Ability to work independently, respond timely and remain composed in hectic environments.
- Ability to listen, understand and articulate the customer's needs, along with possible solutions to sales team and sales management.

**IT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING HIRED IF YOU HAVE**:

- 5+ years of “relevant” pre-sales experience
- Good understanding of storage technologies including SAN, NAS, DAS, Parallel Filesystems, Object Storage, Software Defined Storage etc.
- Good knowledge of storage protocols like BLOCK I/O, NFS, SMB and S3 and what’s required to build solutions around them.
- Good understanding of Ethernet and InfiniBand networking technologies including network topology, blocking ratios, throughput and IOPS capabilities etc.
- Experience of working with Lustre/GPFS/Weka/BeeGFS in the capacity of building or deploying the solution is a plus.
- Experience of architecting or deploying solutions in public or private clouds and multitenant environments.
- Understanding of appropriate content to be developed to address different set of customers (as per their seniority level in the organization).

DDN:
**DDN Core Competencies**:
DDN has a very strong orientation towards these four characteristics and any successful employee will demonstrate these capabilities:

- ** Self-Starter -**Takes independent action to identify and solve problems. Seeks out relevant information needed to make decisions. Gets involved with new initiat