Job Description

The DataDirect Networks Principal Solutions Architect role blends deep technical expertise with a strong consultative approach to helping customers build and scale AI, ML, and HPC solutions. This position plays a key role in connecting DDN's AI and data platform technologies to real customer business challenges - helping organizations improve performance, reduce latency, increase operational efficiency, and accelerate time-to-insight.
Core Responsibilities

• Serve as a trusted advisor to customers by understanding their AI, data, and infrastructure challenges and recommending tailored solutions.
• Design scalable AI and data architectures that support long-term growth, performance, and operational efficiency.
• Partner closely with Sales, Engineering, Product, and Marketing teams to support customer engagements and influence strategy.
• Lead technical presentations, demos, proof-of-concepts, and customer workshops throughout the sales cycle.
• Support partner and alliance relationships across cloud providers, OEMs, integrators, and hyperscalers.
• Deliver enablement and technical training to internal teams and external partners.
• Stay current on AI, data infrastructure, and competitive market trends to effectively position DDN solutions.

What We're Looking For

• Strong background in AI/ML infrastructure, data engineering, AI application development, or technical consulting.
• Experience with modern AI technologies including LLMs, RAG, inference, neural networks, vector databases, and AI pipelines.
• Hands-on familiarity with tools and frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, NVIDIA Enterprise Suite, NeMO, and NIMs.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical teams and executive stakeholders.
• Experience supporting complex customer engagements in a pre-sales or solution consulting environment.
• Strong presentation, relationship-building, and strategic problem-solving skills.

Preferred Background

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, Data Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• Experience working with cloud providers, strategic alliances, and partner ecosystems.
• Background in technical sales engineering, AI consulting, or customer-facing architecture roles.
• Understanding of AI infrastructure optimization, scalability, and data center performance considerations

Base Salary Range: $200,000 - $224,000
In addition to base salary, this role is eligible for variable compensation (commission).

DDN has a very strong orientation towards these 4 characteristics and any successful employee will demonstrate these capabilities:

Self-Starter - Takes independent action to identify and solve problems. Seeks out relevant information needed to make decisions. Gets involved with new initiatives.

Success/Achievement Orientation - Delivers quality results consistently. Targets, achieves (or exceeds) measurable results. Sets challenging goals, focuses on critical priorities, and is accountable.

Problem Solving - Recognizes problems and responds with a systematic assessment that identifies and addresses cause of issue. Practical, realistic, and resourceful.

Innovative - Builds and improves key business processes that enhance the effectiveness of DDN. Generates new ideas, challenges the status quo, and solves problems creatively.

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