Principal Enterprise Presales Architect

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Principal Enterprise Presales Architect based in United States.** This is a senior, customer-facing technical leadership role focused on helping enterprises modernize and automate workloads across private, public, and hybrid-cloud environments. You will act as a trusted technical advisor, connecting customer challenges with scalable architectures and measurable business outcomes. The role combines deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, virtualization, automation, and orchestration with consultative presales leadership. You will lead technical discovery, solution design, demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, and strategic opportunity development alongside sales teams. You will also influence product direction through field insights while helping establish technical best practices across the presales organization. This opportunity is ideal for an experienced architect who can move comfortably between hands-on technical work, executive conversations, and complex enterprise sales cycles. ### Accountabilities - Lead technical discovery sessions to understand customer objectives, infrastructure environments, business requirements, policies, and hybrid-cloud strategies. - Architect and position enterprise solutions across private, public, and hybrid-cloud environments, with a focus on cloud automation, orchestration, governance, self-service, and cost optimization. - Deliver compelling technical presentations, live demonstrations, architecture reviews, workshops, and proof-of-concepts. - Partner with sales teams and sales specialists to qualify opportunities, develop solution strategies, address technical requirements, and accelerate opportunities through the sales cycle. - Translate complex technical capabilities into clear business value for both technical stakeholders and executive decision-makers. - Develop technical proposals, responses to RFPs and RFIs, solution architectures, and ROI or business-case models. - Advise customers on virtualization, cloud orchestration, automation, workload management, and infrastructure modernization strategies. - Collaborate with presales, engineering, product management, professional services, and partner teams to develop solutions and ensure effective customer handoffs. - Provide customer and field insights that can inform product development, technical enablement, demonstrations, and go-to-market strategies. - Create and share technical best practices, playbooks, demonstrations, and customer success stories across the presales organization. - Maintain current knowledge of hybrid-cloud technologies, hypervisors, automation platforms, public-cloud services, and competitive solutions. - Serve as a technical thought leader and trusted advisor to customers, partners, sales teams, and internal stakeholders. - Manage multiple customer opportunities and proof-of-concepts simultaneously while maintaining high technical and customer-service standards. ## Requirements - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related technical discipline preferred; equivalent practical experience may be considered. - 10+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, cloud, virtualization, hybrid-cloud automation, solution architecture, or related technical fields. - Demonstrated experience in customer-facing presales, technical consulting, solution architecture, or technical solution selling. - Advanced knowledge of virtualization technologies and hypervisors such as VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, KVM, Nutanix, OpenShift, or comparable platforms. - Proven experience designing and supporting private, public, and hybrid-cloud environments. - Strong knowledge of automation and scripting technologies, including Ansible, Terraform, PowerShell, Bash, Python, or similar tools. - Working knowledge of major public-cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP. - Strong understanding of Linux and Windows operating systems, networking, storage, and broader infrastructure technologies. - Experience with enterprise cloud management and orchestration platforms is preferred. - Strong technical presales capabilities, including discovery, solution design, demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, opportunity qualification, and technical selling. - Ability to explain sophisticated technical concepts in clear, compelling business terms to technical, operational, and executive audiences. - Excellent presentation, communication, troubleshooting, analytical, and problem-solving skills. - Strong collaboration and stakeholder-management abilities across sales, engineering, product, professional services, and partner organizations. - Understanding of channel ecosystems, partner models, and the competitive hybrid-cloud landscape. - Self-directed, adaptable, and comfortable operating in a fast-paced, innovation-driven environment. - Ability to manage multiple complex customer engagements and competing priorities effectively. - Must be located within the Eastern Time Zone and willing to travel approximately 25% as business needs require. ## Benefits - Primarily remote/teleworker position. - Annual compensation range of $166,500 to $390,500 for positions in Florida and Tennessee, combining base salary and target-level sales compensation at 100% of sales plan. - Compensation mix structured at approximately 80% base salary and 20% target-level sales compensation. - Actual compensation may vary based on geographic location, experience, education, training, and skill level. - Comprehensive benefits designed to support physical, financial, and emotional well-being. - Healthcare and employee benefits programs. - Opportunities for personal and professional development, including programs designed to support career progression and specialization. - Flexible working environment designed to support professional and personal needs. - Inclusive workplace that values diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. - Opportunity to work on complex enterprise cloud transformation initiatives and emerging technologies. - Exposure to senior customer stakeholders, strategic sales engagements, product teams, and industry-leading cloud technologies.