Senior Technical Architect - Data Center Services

Description

At CDW, we make it happen, together. Trust, connection, and commitment are at the heart of how we work together to deliver for our customers. It's why we're coworkers, not just employees. Coworkers who genuinely believe in supporting our customers and one another. We collectively forge our path forward with a level of commitment that speaks to who we are and where we're headed. We're proud to share our story and Make Amazing Happen at CDW.

CDW's vision is to be the best national provider of Advanced Technology Solutions. We'll achieve this reputation by continuing to delight our customers and being the employer of choice for Advanced Technology Solutions. Technical Architects at CDW are smart, hard-working technology consultants who enjoy teaming with other best and brightest technology consultants on highly visible, technically challenging projects and services. We are looking for high-caliber, well-rounded professionals who are passionate about emerging technology, projects, and technology consulting.

Senior Technical Architects are technology thought and innovation leaders at CDW. Technical Architects apply the necessary technical breadth and depth to develop successful CDW services and raise the overall technical capabilities of CDW's consultants.

* Set standards for and provide leadership and guidance around the creation of reference architectures and roadmaps which clearly tie back to customer business and technology outcomes, service delivery targets and requirements

* Oversee the creation of documentation artifact standards for reference architectures, designs, deployment planning, hardware and software standards and standard building blocks. Design a comprehensive technology lifecycle management process, including the definition of required artifacts, approval processes, risk profiles and technology refresh cycles.

* Customers and Sales: Solicit input/feedback from both internal and external customers to shape the services portfolio

* Vendors: Working with other CDW business areas (Partner Management, Strategic Solutions), develop and grow vendor relationships pertinent to Services success

* Stakeholders: Working with other CDW business areas such as PPM, Strategic Solutions, and M&A businesses. Develop and grow vendor relationships pertinent to services success by working with vendor product teams and leadership.

A Senior Technical Architect will grow their business acumen and technical skills around portfolio management to create differentiated services for CDW supporting new technologies with CDW's Product Management team.

This is an exciting opportunity for significant growth of CDW's service capabilities.

Key Areas of Responsibility

RESPONSIBILITY FOR CREATING RELEVENT VALUABLE SERVICES - Here are the roles that Technical Architects play in the defining and maintaining services that we go to market with:

Services Idea and Research - Collaborate with Product Managers, stakeholders and ambassador teams (made up of relevant senior stakeholders) to identify and validate new Advanced Technology service solution opportunities and conduct market research. Provide support in maintaining a rolling roadmap for services.

Service Design - Build Minimal Viable Product (MVP) definitions, standard operating procedures for solution implementation and support, help to validate economic viability of solutions and to help to build customer value propositions.

Manage Controlled Release process for new services and provide early life support where appropriate.

Service Launch- Provide deep and broad technical support to Solutions Specialists, review system designs and participate in bid assurance, as required by customers. Work closely with Engineering and Presales teams to scale operations to support new and existing services.

Empower - Support Product Managers for ongoing sales enablement, technical strategy, pricing, and operational support. Provide enablement support for CDW presales resources. Provide technical strategy and enablement support for CDW technical resources.

Iterate - Participate in post-project debrief sessions, archive intellectual property and transfer knowledge to Engineers and Managed Services and Practice teams. Provide assistance with pricing updates, product enhancements, automation, and if needed, retirement.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR BUILDING THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - Technical Architects are charged with accelerating the technical development of Solution Specialists and Engineers. Here are the practices that Technical Architects apply to grow the best and brightest technical professionals.

Technology and Innovation - Senior Technical Architects are thought leaders in their respective technology spaces having demonstrated the ability to build and lead teams deep in their technology domains and provide support across business units that help develop innovative solutions.

Coaching and Development - Collaborate with Senior Professional Managers, Senior Engineer Managers, Product Managers, and senior technical resources to build staff and training plans for new effective implementation of Advanced Technology Solutions. Set strategy and build an environment capable of providing troubleshooting support for CDW Engineers and Solution Specialists. Responsible for mentoring Technical Architects, Technical Leads, Field Solution Architects and Technical Sales Specialist.

Knowledge Sharing and Training - Work with Product Managers, Senior Professional Services Managers, Senior Engineering Managers, Technical Leads, Senior Engineers and Training Managers to develop training curriculum for new Advanced Technology solutions. Deliver or facilitate technical training to Engineers and Solution Specialists, support the Product Management team in the creation of sales curricula and contribute, lead or own internal online discussion groups and virtual team meetings.

Technology Labs - Lead the build-out of engineering labs. This includes driving procurement strategies, vendor early-field trials (EFT's), and lab documentation and administration in concordance with standards set by the Labs management team.

Intellectual Property Development - Build standard operating procedures for solution implementation and support, maintain knowledge repositories, and construct tools and processes to improve consistency and/or reduce the cost of project delivery. Create, recognize, and elevate CDW IP to legal for patent, copyright, or trademark pursual.

GROW SERVICES GROSS PROFIT- Technical Architects are ultimately accountable for:

Collaborate with Product Managers and Senior Leaders to develop services strategy that aligns to market opportunities with technology evolution.

Selling work on projects, through other Engineers and Solutions Specialists.

Developing and implementing intellectual property, for the benefit of other

Engineers and CDW.Significant involvement in and leadership of managed/hosted/shared network designs and plans.

The information in this position description is intended to convey information about the key responsibilities and requirements of the position. It is not an exhaustive list of the skills, efforts, duties, responsibilities or working conditions associated with the opportunity. Position Descriptions are subject to change.

Qualifications

• Education and/or Experience Qualifications
• Expert level technical certifications or equivalent in modern data center solutions.
• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Computer Science, a related technical degree or equivalent
• Seven to ten years of large-scale, enterprise-class planning, design, implementation and support experience
• 3-5 years of strategic technology consulting leadership or technical product development experience.
• Other Required Qualifications
• Deep knowledge of server architecture, including x86 platforms, blade systems, converged infrastructure, NUMA-aware system design and implications for memory-intensive workloads
• Proficiency in virtualization technologies such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and container platforms (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong understanding of enterprise storage systems (SAN, NAS, object storage) and data protection strategies
• Strong grasp of hybrid infrastructure strategies, including AI services across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
• Proven ability to architect environments that support high-throughput networking, scalable storage, and AI framework integration
• Understanding of data locality, pipeline orchestration, and AI-specific workload tuning
• Experience designing and maintaining lab environments for solution validation, field trials, testing, and demos.
• Proven ability to develop and document reference architectures and solution blueprints.
• Experience supporting presales activities, including technical presentations, RFP responses, and proof-of-concept (PoC) delivery.
• Ability to translate business requirements into scalable and secure technical solutions.
• Demonstrated clear strategic thinking skills and ability to manage the innovation process in an organization
• Demonstrated a track record of continuous learning and a clear ability to deal with ambiguity.
• Proven ability to proactively collaborate and build relationships, take initiative, and creatively problem solve
• Must possess excellent communications skills both orally and written with the ability to effectively interact with Stakeholders and various cross functional teams as well as customer
• History of successfully coordinating complex projects with multiple facets and stakeholders
• Excellent analytical skills. Demonstrated ability to understand data finding to draw conclusions and develop actionable recommendations
• Demonstrated accountability for delivery against business goals and objectives
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 25% or as needed to other CDW locations, meetings and client sites
• Preferred Qualifications
• Project oversight responsibilities, management and technical leadership and engineer mentoring experience
• Prior experience with navigating large corporate organizations
• Preferred Certifications (not all required):
• NVIDIA Certified Professional - AI Infrastructure Specialist
• AWS / Azure / GCP Cloud Architect certifications
• Cisco CCNP Data Center or equivalent
• Nutanix NCM-MCI or HPE ASE Hybrid IT Architect
• Terraform Associate (HashiCorp), or other IaC tools

Pay range: $ 147,000 - $ 203,000, depending on experience and skill set
Annual bonus target of 15% subject to terms and conditions of plan
Benefits overview: https://cdw.benefit-info.com/
Salary ranges may be subject to geographic differentials

CUSTOMER FOCUS AND QUALITY MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES:

Each CDW coworker is responsible for maintaining customer focus and conforms to the CDW quality management system. Specific responsibilities include:

a) Periodic reviews of CDW Circle of Service Philosophy and the Quality Policy to understand CDW's commitment to excellent client service and continual improvement and to conform to these policies and philosophies at all times

b) During your orientation period, review with your supervisor as needed the quality procedures and operating instructions listed at Connect/Departments/Resources/ISO intranet site that apply to your specific assignment(s) within the scope of this job position.

c) And after the orientation period to conform to these procedures and instructions, including any reporting (and/or record keeping) responsibilities.

d) Report any client problem, or any service outage that may cause potential client problems to your supervisor.

e) Communicate improvement ideas that you have regarding CDW service quality or client satisfaction per established means.

Each coworker is accountable for their actions and is required to exercise good judgment in everything they do on behalf of CDW. Part of that responsibility includes ensuring that you understand and live up to the values and standards we set for ourselves in the CDW Way, the CDW Way Code (our code of ethics and business conduct), and all policies and procedures relevant to your job responsibilities. Additionally, every coworker has a responsibility to ask questions when they are unsure of what those values, standards and policies require, and to take action if they believe someone else is not acting consistently with those values, standards and policies.

Additional information is available on Connect, and confidential/anonymous assistance is available to coworkers through CDW Way Direct (our ethics helpline) at 877-7-CDW-WAY (877-723-9929) or www.cdw.ethicspoint.com.

We make technology work so people can do great things.

CDW is a leading multi-brand provider of information technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. A Fortune 500 company and member of the S&P 500 Index, CDW helps its customers to navigate an increasingly complex IT market and maximize return on their technology investments. Together, we unite. Together, we win. Together, we thrive.

CDW is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by state and local law.