Presales Storage Architect – Unstructured Data

Description

The role is hybrid, with an expectation of about 2 days per week in a company office.

The company works across edge, cloud and data, helping customers connect, protect, analyze and act on their data and applications.

The team is looking for a storage architect focused on unstructured data, AI and analytics. The role is customer-facing and shapes solution design, customer adoption and product strategy.

You will combine solid storage fundamentals with a clear view of how data moves through AI and analytics environments, and help customers design, size, validate and tune storage for AI inference, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), analytics, data lakes and other data-heavy workloads.

Responsibilities

• Design and document file and S3 object storage solutions for AI, analytics and enterprise use.
• Map application data flows, lifecycle needs and performance characteristics to choose the right storage design.
• Size storage by capacity, throughput, latency, network bandwidth, growth, availability and workload needs.
• Run technical workshops, assessments, benchmarks and hands-on proofs of concept (POCs).
• Bring deep S3 object storage expertise and working knowledge of NFS and SMB.
• Apply AI inference, RAG, data lake and analytics pipeline knowledge to storage decisions.
• Work with product management and engineering to turn customer needs into product and roadmap priorities.
• Share competitive insight and market knowledge in customer talks and internal strategy sessions.
• Travel as needed to support customers, partners and strategic deals.
• Analyze customer data flows, workloads, growth patterns and data management needs.
• Size environments for performance, capacity, resiliency and scale.
• Plan, execute and validate POCs covering performance, integration, scalability and operations.
• Design storage for AI inference, RAG, analytics and data lakes, covering throughput, latency, metadata, network design and data access.
• Explain how data is ingested, stored, processed, protected, moved, governed and consumed across modern pipelines.
• Turn field experience and customer requirements into product feedback and roadmap input.
• Provide competitive analysis, technical positioning and solution guidance to sales and technical teams.
• Present architectures to executive and deeply technical audiences.
• Support presales work, including RFIs and RFPs, sizing and technical justification.

Requirements

• At least 7 years designing, implementing or supporting enterprise storage and data architectures.
• A bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong experience in customer-facing architecture, consulting or presales.
• Solid knowledge of S3 object storage, including buckets, objects, APIs, authentication, data protection and common application integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of enterprise file protocols, especially NFS and SMB.
• Experience sizing storage for capacity, performance, growth, network and application needs.
• Proven ability to plan, set up, run and troubleshoot technical POCs.
• Understanding of modern AI and analytics pipelines, including inference, RAG, vector databases, data lakes and Lakehouse architectures, and large-scale analytics.
• Ability to place storage within the wider picture of data flow, lifecycle, management, protection, governance and application use.
• Strong grasp of storage performance concepts: throughput, latency, IOPS, metadata performance, concurrency and network bandwidth.
• Excellent communication, presentation, troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.
• Willingness and ability to travel for customer work.
• Experience with several of the following is a strong signal: AI inference and RAG architectures; vector databases, embeddings and retrieval workflows; data lakes and Lakehouse architectures; analytics platforms and distributed query engines; GPU-based infrastructure and AI data pipelines; high-throughput ingestion and processing; S3-based application architectures; data movement between compute, storage, cloud and AI platforms; performance characterization and workload benchmarking.
• Experience with one or more enterprise file or object storage platforms is preferred, such as Dell PowerScale or ObjectScale, Pure Storage FlashBlade, NetApp ONTAP or StorageGRID, VAST Data, Scality, or other enterprise file or S3-compatible object platforms.
• Experience in any of the following would be a real plus: AWS, Azure and GCP storage services and integration patterns; hybrid and multi-cloud data architectures; modern AI and analytics platforms and their storage needs; the competitive file and object storage landscape; technical presales, consulting, solution architecture or customer advisory work.

Conditions

The role is hybrid, with an average of 2 days per week in a company office.

The role involves travel to support customers, partners and strategic opportunities.

The company is an equal opportunity employer and makes decisions on qualifications, merit and business need.

The company complies with laws on employer use of arrest and conviction records.

Benefits

• Health and wellbeing benefits covering physical, financial and emotional needs.
• Personal and professional development programs, including paths to become a subject expert or move into another division.
• Flexibility to manage work and personal needs.
• Accommodation is available during the application and interview process on request.