Senior Solutions Engineer

Description:

This is a great opportunity to be part of one of the fastest-growing infrastructure companies in history, an organization that is in the center of the hurricane being created by the revolution in artificial intelligence.

"VAST's data management vision is the future of the market."- Forbes

VAST Data is the data platform company for the AI era. We are building the enterprise software infrastructure to capture, catalog, refine, enrich, and protect massive datasets and make them available for real-time data analysis and AI training and inference. Designed from the ground up to make AI simple to deploy and manage, VAST takes the cost and complexity out of deploying enterprise and AI infrastructure across data center, edge, and cloud.

Our success has been built through intense innovation, a customer-first mentality and a team of fearless VASTronauts who leverage their skills & experiences to make real market impact. This is an opportunity to be a key contributor at a pivotal time in our company’s growth and at a pivotal point in computing history.

We are seeking an experienced Solutions Data Engineer who possess both technical depth and strong interpersonal skills to partner with internal and external teams to develop scalable, flexible, and cutting-edge solutions. Solutions Engineers collaborate with operations and business development to help craft solutions to meet customer business problems.

A Solutions Engineer works to balance various aspects of the project, from safety to design. Additionally, a Solutions Engineer researches advanced technology regarding best practices in the field and seek to find cost-effective solutions.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Solutions Engineer who combines strong technical depth, hands-on problem-solving capabilities, and excellent interpersonal skills.

The Solutions Engineer will work closely with customers, partners, Sales, Engineering, Product Management, Support, and other internal teams to design, validate, and deliver scalable, flexible, and innovative solutions based on VAST technologies.

This role combines deep technical expertise with customer engagement. The Solutions Engineer will help customers understand how VAST can address their technical and business challenges, design architectures that integrate into complex enterprise environments, develop and deliver technical demonstrations and Proofs of Concept (POCs), and troubleshoot sophisticated infrastructure and application challenges.

The ideal candidate is hands-on, curious, customer-focused, and comfortable working across storage, networking, virtualization, operating systems, cloud platforms, Kubernetes, and enterprise applications

Responsibilities

• Understand customer technical requirements, business challenges, workloads, and existing infrastructure.
• Design scalable, high-performance solutions based on customer needs and VAST technologies.
• Build and present technical demos, Proofs of Concept (POCs), reference architectures, and prototypes.
• Translate requirements into detailed technical designs, implementation plans, and specifications.
• Deploy, configure, test, and validate VAST storage in customer, cloud, and lab environments.
• Deploy and troubleshoot VAST solutions across Kubernetes, OpenShift, public/hybrid cloud, and virtualized environments.
• Execute performance benchmarking, analyze workload bottlenecks, and optimize storage performance.
• Analyze existing customer architectures to recommend improvements, optimizations, and integration strategies.
• Troubleshoot complex infrastructure, application, networking, storage, cloud, and Kubernetes issues.
• Act as a technical escalation point and collaborate with Engineering and Support to resolve issues.
• Develop tools, automation, and best practices to prevent recurring technical challenges.
• Create high-quality documentation, implementation guides, reference architectures, and troubleshooting procedures.
• Partner with Sales and Business Development during technical evaluations and strategic opportunities.
• Share customer requirements, field feedback, and product enhancement requests with Product Management and Engineering.
• Research emerging technologies and evaluate integration with VAST solutions.
• Develop reusable assets, automation scripts, demos, and reference environments for internal and external use.
• Continuously refine methodologies for customer evaluations, performance testing, and technical enablement.

Requirements

• Proven experience in Solutions Engineering, Systems Engineering, Technical Consulting, or a customer-facing technical role.
• Strong understanding of enterprise infrastructure and modern data center architectures.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise storage technologies.
• Strong knowledge of file and object protocols, including NFS, SMB, and S3.
• Hands-on experience with public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP), including networking, compute, storage, and hybrid architectures.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, CSI, container networking, and app deployment.
• Solid understanding of storage performance (throughput, IOPS, latency, concurrency, bottleneck analysis).
• Practical experience benchmarking, analyzing, and troubleshooting storage performance using standard tools.
• Proficiency with Linux and Windows operating systems.
• Experience with virtualization platforms like VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V.
• Working knowledge of Active Directory, authentication, and enterprise identity management.
• Experience with backup, disaster recovery, and data protection architectures.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across compute, storage, networking, virtualization, Kubernetes, and cloud layers.
• Ability to quickly learn new technologies and adapt to complex customer environments.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and customer engagements simultaneously.
• Ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong technical documentation and communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Sound technical judgment with analytical decision-making ability.

Advantageous Experience

Experience in one or more of the following areas would be considered an advantage:

• AI/ML infrastructure and GPU environments
• High-performance computing (HPC)
• Hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud architectures
• High-performance networking
• RDMA and NVMe over Fabrics
• Kubernetes storage architectures and CSI
• Automation and scripting using Python, Bash, PowerShell, or similar technologies
• Infrastructure-as-Code and automation frameworks such as Terraform and Ansible
• Databases, analytics platforms, and data-intensive applications
• Large-scale enterprise storage environments
• Performance engineering, workload characterization, and benchmarking

Personal Attributes

• Strong customer orientation and a passion for solving complex technical problems.
• Hands-on mindset with a willingness to investigate technical challenges deeply.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Creative thinker who is comfortable challenging assumptions and thinking outside the box.
• Highly curious and eager to learn new technologies.
• Strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Excellent collaboration and teamwork skills.
• Comfortable working independently while collaborating closely with local and global teams.
• Flexible and adaptable in rapidly changing environments.
• Strong commitment to customer success and the overall success of VAST Data.