Now Hiring - Solutions Architect in West Allis, WI

Duties and Responsibilities

Post-Sales Delivery

• Follow the established services delivery process and continue the development of best practices and tools to ensure the successful delivery of communications and collaboration solutions to our customers;
• Work with the Project Management Office to schedule and close assigned engagements;
• Lead design meetings with customers; document and successfully implement the approved design;
• Troubleshoot issues and support local customers as required and assigned by the Project Management Office;
• Function as “Technical Lead” and mentor on teams deploying midsized-large, complex, and strategic projects;
• Experience with SAN, NAS, or object storage infrastructures required and specific experience with IBM fiber channel knowledge, fiber channel switches, like Cisco MDS, and/or Brocade and knowledge of NetApp products is a plus;
• Provide detailed project planning, design, implementation, and final As-Built documentation.

Pre-Sales Opportunity Development

• Assist Account Managers with the development of qualified opportunities through remote and on-site customer meetings;
• Gather all of the relevant business and technical requirements to develop the appropriate solution;
• Develop solution proposals that define customer expectations, product and services requirements that are necessary to achieve documented client objectives;
• Strategically collaborate with partners and manufacturers to drive opportunity;
• Develop and lead technical hands-on integration of various products for proof of concepts and demo center demonstrations;
• Develop project documentation including bills of material, service estimates, statements of work, high-level project plans, architecture designs, and operational training material;
• Provide detailed knowledge transfer of emerging technology solutions to the post-sales engineering team.

Risk Management

• Continue the development of best practices and tools for opportunity development and requirements gathering;
• Lead weekly solution assurance meetings to review pending proposals with the appropriate Services;
• Manager to identify risk, perform gap analysis and obtain approval on associated delivery services;
• Participate in weekly meetings with the Project Management Office reviewing active, assigned engagements to identify open items to complete, budget vs. actual hours, risks, and next steps;
• Participate in quarterly meetings with the Engineering team to discuss recent engagements, challenges, and opportunities; incorporate improvements into the pre-sales process.

Communications

• Responsible for clear and timely communication to multiple stakeholder groups on a frequent basis.

Miscellaneous

• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications and Requirements

• 8+ years’ experience as an IT professional, working hands on designing, configuring, and installing IBM Systems Middleware, Information Management and Analytics solutions with a demonstrated increase in responsibility over time;
• Bachelor’s degree in a business or IT-related field;
• Strong technology consulting skills is preferred;
• Understand and translate customer business requirements into technical solutions;
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to interface at varying and appropriate levels of management;
• Excellent customer relationship management skills;
• Ability to break down technical concepts into business terms;
• Well organized, thrive in a sense-of-urgency environment, leverage best practices, and innovate through any problem with a can-do attitude;
• Ability to handle multiple priorities and interruptions with minimal impact on productivity;
• Demonstrate a high level of independent judgment and initiative, self-starter;
• Must be able to work a flexible work schedule;
• Strong technical knowledge of enterprise Data Network / Data Center environments;
• Previous experience in a variety of relevant installation projects;
• Knowledge of and ability to use, the configurators and sizing tools for the platforms supported;
• Ability to obtain and maintain both pre- and post-sales technical certifications in IBM, Netapp, Dell, and Microsoft space.

Meridian Group International, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

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