Senior Sales Engineer

Data Direct Networks

$130K — $155K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
  • 3-8+ years in pre-sales, solutions architecture, or technical consulting
  • Strong understanding of storage and data architectures including SAN and NAS
  • Proven track record designing storage/infrastructure solutions
  • Hands-on experience with enterprise storage systems
  • Customer-facing communication skills
  • Genuine curiosity about AI and its impact across industries

Responsibilities

  • Partner with customers to identify critical data challenges
  • Translate technical requirements into scalable storage solutions
  • Act as a trusted advisor throughout the sales cycle
  • Architect storage solutions for AI/ML and data analytics
  • Design systems for reliability, resilience, and security
  • Conduct live demos and performance benchmarking
  • Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams based on field insights

Benefits

  • Professional development opportunities
  • Work with cutting-edge AI and storage technologies
  • Collaborative and innovative team culture
  • Diverse projects across various high-impact industries
  • Mentorship and guidance from experienced team members
Full Job Description
The Role

As a Sales Engineer, you'll architect high-performance storage solutions that enable customers to achieve their boldest ambitions. Work across finance, pharmaceuticals, education, and physical AI-designing systems that power real-time trading, accelerate drug discovery, enable groundbreaking research, and fuel autonomous systems.

You'll translate complex customer requirements into elegant technical solutions, demonstrate capabilities through POCs and benchmarks, and serve as a trusted advisor throughout the sales cycle.

What You'll Do

Customer Engagement
  • Partner with customers to understand their critical data challenges-high-frequency trading, genomics processing, AI model training, or autonomous vehicle sensor fusion
  • Translate technical requirements into elegant, scalable storage solutions that exceed expectations
  • Act as trusted technical advisor throughout the sales cycle

Solution Design
  • Architect storage for AI/ML training, HPC simulations, data analytics, and GPU-accelerated workloads
  • Design for reliability, resilience, security, and scale-balancing performance with data protection
  • Create BOMs, system architectures, and technical proposals for complex RFPs
  • Conduct live demos, POCs, and performance benchmarking
  • Integrate with GPU clusters, Kubernetes, cloud platforms, and AI frameworks

Innovation & Growth
  • Stay current on AI infrastructure and storage technology trends
  • Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams using field insights
  • Mentor team members and contribute to technical thought leadership
  • Shape product direction based on customer needs


What You Bring

Technical Foundation (All Levels)
  • Strong understanding of storage and data architectures: SAN, NAS, object storage, parallel file systems
  • Knowledge of architectural patterns for reliability, resilience, security, and scale
  • Understanding of storage and data protocols: S3, POSIX, NFS, SMB
  • Familiarity with network protocols: TCP/IP, InfiniBand, RDMA
  • Curiosity about massively parallel technologies (Lustre, GPFS, Exascaler)
  • Aptitude for AI workloads and how storage enables AI innovation
  • Ability to communicate technical concepts to both engineers and executives

Entry Level (0-3 years)
  • Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
  • Exposure to storage/systems through coursework, internships, or projects
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
  • Customer-facing communication skills

Experienced (3+ years)
  • 3-8+ years in pre-sales, solutions architecture, or technical consulting
  • Proven track record designing storage/infrastructure solutions
  • Hands-on experience with enterprise storage systems
  • Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, HPC, or high-performance workloads (preferred)
  • Success managing complex technical sales cycles

What Sets You Apart
  • Genuine curiosity about AI and its impact across industries
  • Ownership mindset-you solve problems until they're solved
  • Ability to translate technical complexity into business value
  • Thrive in fast-evolving technology environments
  • Collaborative team player with integrity and empathy

Diverse Backgrounds Welcome: Whether you're coming from enterprise storage vendors (Weka, VAST, NetApp, Pure), research computing (university HPC, national labs), or infrastructure roles (cloud architects, platform engineers), your experience translates to this role. Technical depth + customer focus matter more than your starting point.

Industries We Serve
  • Financial Services: High-frequency trading, risk modeling, real-time analytics
  • Pharmaceuticals: Genomics sequencing, drug discovery, clinical research
  • Education & Research: University HPC, AI research, climate modeling, scientific computing
  • Physical AI & Robotics: Autonomous vehicles, robotic systems, sensor data processing

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