Director, Sales Engineering

Summary

The Director, Sales Engineering - JDM/Storage for the Northeast U.S. serves as the primary technical resource for the account management team. This role provides expert pre-sales and post-sales support for complex AI-driven data center solutions within the Northeast/Eastern Seaboard. As the key technical advisor, you will drive the technology evaluation stage of the sales process through consultative assessments of mission-critical requirements and deep-dive product demonstrations. You must be able to articulate the value of high-performance storage and networking architectures to both senior leadership and technical subject matter experts, ensuring complete customer satisfaction across the entire procurement lifecycle. This is a remote position requiring travel as necessary. Candidates should be located near a major airport or Celestica US hub, with a preference for location in NYC.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Sales Managers to drive the sales process and achieve quota objectives for AI storage and networking portfolios.
• Identify and eliminate technical hurdles, including security compliance and interoperability issues, to successfully close opportunities.
• Lead the development and delivery of high-impact product demonstrations and technical presentations tailored to use cases, including the design, configuration and management of on-site Proof of Concept (PoC) activities.
• Represent AI storage and networking solutions at major field events and trade shows, such as SuperCompute, OCP Global, and other significant customer technology days.
• Lead technical responses for functional and technical elements of RFIs, RFPs, and SOWs.
• Convey specific technical requirements—including security, performance, lifecycle and scalability needs—to internal Product Management and Technology teams.
• Coordinate with 3rd party suppliers and Celestica Product Line Marketing to align technology with customer expectations.
• Ability to travel throughout the assigned territory and to manufacturing facilities as needed for customer engagements.

Qualifications

• 12 to 14 years of applicable technical experience, with at least 5+ years focused on JDM Compute and Storage node design and Neocloud/Hyperscaler customer architecture.
• Experience in storage/compute node design and conducting requirements discovery, customer RFP responses, and product development strategy for design/manufacturing customer opportunities.
• Deep experience with Storage systems (Traditional HA/Dual SP and Scale-Out storage architectures) and associated network transport systems, topologies, and protocols in Storage environments (e.g., RoCE, NVMe-oF, Ethernet) is required. Experience with AI cluster optimization in relation to KV Cache and the role it plays in accelerating inference operations (prefill and decode) is very desirable.
• Experience with AI-optimized storage architectures and related computer systems that feed data to high performance compute requirements.
• Experience with software defined storage operating systems such as VAST Data, Xinnor, Hammerspace, Weka, Qumulo, or other products that employ similar architectural concepts. Familiarity with SONiC, Linux, and networking NOS technologies is highly desired.
• Familiarity with rack-level integration, including high-speed optical modules and advanced cabling for AI clusters. File system integration with operating systems and storage performance optimization.
• English language proficiency.
• Exceptional presentation and written communication skills for customer briefings, proposal responses, and customer discovery/solutioning sessions.
• Ability to solve complex sales obstacles through creative, adaptive, and analytical approaches.

Work Environment

• Primarily a normal office or remote home-office environment.
• Requires sustained visual concentration and the ability to work long hours during critical mission periods or proposal deadlines.
• Frequent overnight travel (up to 50%) to customer sites, command centers, or manufacturing facilities is required.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.