Description
You sit at the center of our quoting cycle. Sales brings the opportunity and the client's requirements; you turn them into a solution that is technically sound, deliverable by our engineering teams, profitable for DQ, and competitive in the market. You work across four domains of managed infrastructure and you are expected to be credible in all of them, deep in at least two.
This is a design and estimating role, not a sales role and not a delivery role. You are measured on the quality, speed, and accuracy of the solutions you produce and on how well those solutions perform once they are sold.
Where you fit in the process
DQ runs a structured Opportunity-to-Proposal model. Opportunities are classified by client type, size, and service type, and each class carries a defined proposal artifact, review path, and Proposal Commit Date (PCD). The PCD is a commitment to the client, and Design Engineering owns hitting it.
Small and budgetary opportunities move fast: an AI-assisted budgetary estimate is produced within one to two business days and you review it for technical sanity before it goes out. Larger opportunities go through full design: requirements, architecture, environment plan, work breakdown, bill of materials, and pricing, validated at technical and profitability gates before proposal assembly.
You receive structured discovery inputs and you are expected to push back when they are incomplete. Designing on assumptions is how proposals lose money.
What you will do:
Design solutions
• Translate client requirements and discovery data into complete, deliverable solutions across managed services (Quest Complete) and projects.
• Produce the standard solution deliverables: work breakdown structure for project labor, environment plan, policy-to-configuration instructions for managed services onboarding, bill of materials, and pricing inputs.
• Size hardware, software, licensing, and labor accurately. Select the right products and vendors from DQ's standard catalog and justify exceptions.
• Design to DQ standards so what you sell is what Engineering can build and Service Operations can run.
Own the quoting cycle
• Review AI-assisted budgetary estimates for technical validity within the 24-hour target and 48-hour SLA.
• Hit the Proposal Commit Date on every opportunity you own, and flag risk to the date early when discovery, vendor lead time, or scope threatens it.
• Carry solutions through the Requirement, Technical, and Profitability validation gates, and present them for Deal Desk review when required.
• Support Sales in client discovery and design sessions. Ask the questions that surface hidden scope before it becomes unbilled work.
Make the process better
• Build and maintain reusable design patterns, reference architectures, and estimating templates for common opportunity types.
• Feed lessons from delivery back into design: when a sold solution runs over on labor or under on scope, you own understanding why and fixing the pattern.
• Contribute to the discovery intake and quote tooling so the inputs you receive get better over time.
• Keep current on vendor roadmaps and licensing changes across the four domains and update standards accordingly.
• Technology domains
• You are expected to design competently across all four domains and to be the deep expert in at least two.
Domain
What you need to design and estimate
End-User Productivity
Windows and Mac OS workstations, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Intune), Entra ID and identity design, DNS and domain services, licensing (Business Premium, E3/E5, add-ons), endpoint lifecycle and imaging, MDM/MAM, and migration from legacy or competing platforms.
Cybersecurity
EDR/MDR, email security, MFA and conditional access, privileged access, vulnerability management, security awareness, backup and recovery design, SIEM and log retention, and alignment to frameworks (CIS Controls, NIST CSF, NIST SP 800-171 / CMMC, HIPAA, PCI) as required by the client.
Network and Perimeter
LAN/WAN design, switching and wireless (enterprise vendors), next-generation firewalls and UTM, SD-WAN, VPN and zero-trust access, segmentation and VLAN design, ISP and circuit selection, and structured cabling scope.
Data Center and Cloud
On-premises virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), server and storage sizing, Azure (IaaS, networking, identity integration, cost estimation), hybrid designs, Azure Virtual Desktop, disaster recovery and business continuity architecture, and lift-and-shift vs. modernization tradeoffs.
Requirements
• Seven or more years in IT infrastructure roles, with at least three in a design, pre-sales, solutions architecture, or senior engineering capacity at an MSP, VAR, or consultancy.
• Broad and current technical range across the four domains above, with demonstrable depth in at least two. You can explain the tradeoffs in an Azure vs. on-premises decision as fluently as a firewall replacement or an M365 licensing consolidation.
• Estimating discipline. You can decompose a project into labor tasks, size them, and defend the number. You understand hardware and software margin and what makes a managed services contract profitable.
• Managed services fluency. You understand how an MSP delivers, what is in and out of a managed agreement, and how a design decision becomes an operational cost or an operational win.
• Written clarity. Your designs, assumptions, and scope statements are precise enough that a project engineer can build from them and a client can sign them.
• Deadline ownership. You work to committed dates and raise risk early rather than late.
Strongly preferred
• Microsoft certifications (AZ-104, AZ-305, MS-102, SC-300 or equivalent) and one or more network or security vendor certifications (Fortinet, Cisco Meraki, Palo Alto, Aruba, or similar).
• Experience with CMMC or other regulated environments where design choices carry compliance consequences.
• Experience using a PSA and CPQ toolchain (Autotask, ConnectWise, Salesforce CPQ, or similar) to produce quotes and proposals.
• Experience with vendor distribution and licensing programs (Microsoft CSP, Ingram, TD Synnex, or similar).
• Comfort using AI-assisted tools for discovery, estimation, and document production, and the judgment to know when the output is wrong.
