Solution Director (Data Center)

About the role
The Director of Data Center Solutions Engineering is responsible for leading, growing, and scaling the Data Center Solutions practice across mid-market and enterprise accounts, including highly complex environments such as Fortune 500 organizations and high-performance computing environments (e.g., high-frequency trading firms).
This is a hands-on, Customer-facing role with Leadership responsibilities. The Director will actively lead large and complex solution engagements while mentoring and developing a team of Solutions Architects. This leader will set technical direction, ensure architectural rigor, maintain OEM alignment, and partner closely with Sales to drive profitable growth.
The Director serves as the senior technical authority for Data Center solutions, accountable for technical strategy, deal quality, governance, and team development.
Travel to customer meetings and strategic OEM engagements is expected.

Annual salary range: $175K - $215K USD + Commission


What you'll be doing

Practice Leadership & Strategy

• Own and grow the Data Center Line of Business across compute, storage, networking, power, cooling, and hybrid infrastructure.
• Develop and execute go-to-market strategies aligned to enterprise and mid-market segments.
• Establish technical standards, architectural frameworks, and design governance.
• Ensure solutions meet profitability targets while maintaining competitive positioning.

Hands-On Technical Leadership - Player/Coach

• Personally lead and architect large, transformational, and technically complex opportunities.
• Act as executive technical sponsor on strategic pursuits.
• Provide architectural oversight on high-density, low-latency, and mission-critical environments.
• Validate solution designs across compute, storage, networking, security, power, and cooling.
• Guide infrastructure modernization, hybrid cloud transitions, and data center consolidation initiatives.

Sales & Large Deal Support

• Partner with Sales Leadership to identify, qualify, and close large-scale opportunities.
• Support complex RFPs and executive presentations.
• Lead governance reviews, articulate risk mitigation strategies, and defend architectural decisions.
• Drive complex negotiations and transformational sales engagements.
• Ensure forecast accuracy and disciplined pipeline management.

Team Development & Mentorship

• Player Coach who will mentor and develop a team of Solutions Architects.
• Provide technical coaching, deal review, and escalation support.
• Foster cross-team collaboration and best practice sharing.
• Build succession plans and elevate the technical depth of the team.
• Participate in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring senior architectural talent.

OEM & Partner Engagement

• Develop and maintain senior-level OEM relationships.
• Influence partner roadmaps and access executive technical resources.
• Drive strategic alignment with key vendors in compute, networking, storage, and emerging technologies.
• Ensure alignment with channel strategy and incentive programs.

What you have

Ideal Experience & Qualifications

• 10-15+ years in enterprise infrastructure architecture or data center engineering.
• 5+ years leading senior Solutions Architects or engineering teams.
• Experience designing and supporting:
• Enterprise and multi-site data centers
• High-density compute environments
• Low-latency infrastructures
• Hybrid cloud integration
• Demonstrated experience closing multi-million-dollar infrastructure deals.
• Strong financial acumen (TCO, ROI, margin modeling, pricing strategy).
• Proven experience presenting to CIO, CTO, and executive stakeholders.
• Deep understanding of OEM ecosystems and channel dynamics.
• Experience supporting highly regulated or performance-sensitive environments (e.g., financial services, healthcare, HPC).
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience required.

Technical Depth Expectations

The ideal candidate must demonstrate hands-on expertise in:

• Compute (rack, blade, HCI, GPU-enabled workloads)
• Enterprise storage (SAN/NAS/NVMe)
• Modern networking architectures (leaf-spine, SDN)
• Data protection & disaster recovery
• Power architecture (UPS topology, redundancy models, kW per rack planning)
• Cooling strategy (containment models, high-density cooling)
• Hybrid cloud integration and automation frameworks

This leader must be capable of whiteboarding complex infrastructure in real time and defending design decisions at both technical and executive levels.

Leadership Characteristics

• Technically credible and commercially sharp
• Comfortable leading in front of executive stakeholders
• Structured and disciplined in governance
• Strategic thinker with tactical execution capability
• High sense of urgency and accountability
• Collaborative across Sales, Services, and OEM partners
• Strong communicator with executive presence

This role combines:

• Practice growth
• Large-deal technical leadership
• Team development
• OEM strategy
• Governance rigor
• Profit accountability

What you can expect

There's so much more to enjoy about being at Computacenter than just having a rewarding career. In addition to offering competitive compensation plans and long-term career opportunities, we provide an attractive mix of benefit plans to contribute to your good health, future financial security, and peace of mind.

About us

Computacenter is a leading independent technology partner, trusted by large corporate and public sector organizations. We help our world-renowned customers to source, transform, and manage their IT infrastructure to deliver digital transformation, enabling users and their business. We're a public company quoted on the London FTSE 250 (CCC.L) and employ over 20,000 people worldwide. In the US, we support some of the country's best-known businesses with regional hubs in San Francisco and Irvine, CA; Norcross, GA; Plano, TX; and New York City; and Integration Centers in Silicon Valley and Atlanta.