About The Role
Role: Solutions Architect
Location: Birmingham (hybrid working)
Contract Type: Permanent
Salary Package: Competitive salary plus company benefits
Hours: 9:00 am – 5:30 pm, Monday – Friday
Key Responsibilities
* Opportunity Qualification & Technical Discovery – run structured discovery with customers and internal stakeholders to clarify AI workload goals, constraints, success criteria and buying process.
* Solution Architecture & Design – produce end‑to‑end AI infrastructure architectures across compute, networking, storage and software; define sizing, resilience and operability for target workloads.
* Workload Sizing & Performance Guidance – translate model/workload requirements into practical sizing and explain performance trade‑offs, scaling limits and bottlenecks.
* Technical Proposal & Documentation – create and review technical sections of proposals (SoW inputs, architecture diagrams, BOM guidance, risks/mitigations, acceptance criteria and deployment approach) for customer stakeholders.
* POCs, Pilots & Benchmarks – plan and execute proof‑of‑concept and pilot activities, troubleshoot issues with engineering or partners, and document outcomes.
* Customer Communication & Executive Readouts – present architectures and trade‑offs to technical and executive audiences, facilitate design reviews and decision checkpoints.
* Competitive Positioning & Field Enablement – contribute to battlecards, reference architectures and sales plays, helping teams articulate differentiation.
* Handoff to Delivery & Customer Success – ensure a clean transition from pre‑sales to implementation with clear requirements, validated design, risks and acceptance tests, staying engaged during early deployment.
* Deal Support & Governance – support RFP/RFI responses, security and architecture reviews, maintain opportunity notes and decision logs to reduce execution risk.
Required Skills and Experience
* Experience in a customer‑facing technical role (pre‑sales architect, solutions architect, sales engineer, field engineer, technical consultant) supporting complex infrastructure or platform deals.
* Strong technical literacy across enterprise/AI infrastructure: GPU servers, PCIe/NVLink concepts, networking fabrics, storage fundamentals, and Linux‑based operations.
* Ability to translate business and workload goals into architectures, sizing and trade‑offs with clear assumptions and acceptance criteria.
* Consultative selling skills: leading technical conversations, influencing stakeholders, handling objections, and partnering with account teams.
* Strong communication: writing high‑quality solution documentation and presenting to both technical and executive audiences.
* Experience coordinating across engineering, delivery and partners/OEMs without authority, keeping multiple workstreams moving during sales cycles.
* Curiosity and continuous learning in AI: staying current on accelerator platforms, model trends and infrastructure choices impacting training/inference performance and total cost of ownership.
Preferred Skills and Experience
* Hands‑on experience with AI/HPC platforms (Kubernetes, Slurm, Ray) and familiarity with GPU software stacks (CUDA ecosystem concepts, drivers, container runtimes).
* Knowledge of networking for distributed training/inference (RDMA/RoCE concepts, topology awareness, congestion management, observability) and data pipeline/storage considerations.
* Experience building and delivering pre‑sales assets: reference architectures, sizing guides, benchmark reports, TCO/ROI models, battlecards, and technical workshop material.
* Exposure to enterprise requirements: security/compliance, on‑prem deployment constraints, procurement processes, lifecycle support, and supply/lead‑time realities.
* Industry standard qualifications desirable. Vendor specific qualifications desirable.
Equal Opportunities
We are an equal opportunities employer. SCC is committed to providing equal opportunities and a proactive and inclusive approach to equality and diversity in employment. No applicant or employee will be treated less favourably on the ground of a protected characteristic such as sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, gender reassignment, trade union membership, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race and religion or belief.
#J-18808-Ljbffr