Senior Director, AI Platforms

Job Summary

The Sr Director, AI Platforms is the senior technical leader accountable for building and operating Trace3's AI Platforms practice within the Infrastructure & Operations Business Unit of the Office of the CTO. This role combines deep, hands-on expertise in full-stack AI factory design with leadership of a high-performing technical presales team.

Summary of Essential Job Functions

• Practice Leadership & Team Building: Build, hire, coach, and retain a team of presales solutions architects covering AI infrastructure and HPC, orchestration and observability, and AI-specific cybersecurity.

• Own team capacity planning, deal support coverage, and utilization targets against pipeline volume and velocity.

• Establish role definitions, technical career paths, certification roadmaps, and performance standards aligned with broader OCTO presales norms.

• Partner with Data & Analytics, Security Solutions, Digital, and Innovation teams to present a single technical front to customers on AI opportunities.

• AI Factory Solution Architecture: Serve as the primary technical architect for Trace3's largest and most complex AI infrastructure opportunities, including greenfield AI factory builds, training and inference cluster designs, and edge AI deployments.

• Architect end-to-end designs covering GPU compute, CPU head nodes, scale-out and parallel storage, east-west and north-south networking, power, cooling, and facility integration.

• Define reference architectures, bill-of-materials templates, and repeatable deal patterns that accelerate presales velocity and improve design quality.

• Lead architectural validation, risk assessment, and commercial shaping for strategic pursuits.

• AI Labs Ownership & Operation: Own the technical roadmap, funding case, and day-to-day operation of Trace3's AI Labs environments.

• Define benchmarking methodologies, customer demo experiences, proof-of-concept frameworks, and vendor integration projects run through the Labs.

• Curate a rotating hardware estate across priority OEM platforms including NVIDIA DGX and HGX, Cisco AI infrastructure, Dell PowerEdge XE, Super Micro, Lenovo ThinkSystem, and HPE ProLiant Compute DL or Cray.

• Partner with marketing, field enablement, and OEM alliance teams to monetize Labs access through customer workshops, executive briefings, and OEM co-sell motions.

• OEM and Ecosystem Leadership: Serve as the senior Trace3 technical point of contact for NVIDIA (including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NCP, and Partner Program activities), Cisco, Dell Technologies, Super Micro, Lenovo, and HPE.

• Align Trace3's AI Platforms portfolio with OEM roadmaps, partner programs, and incentive structures.

• Engage vendor engineering, product management, and field alliance teams to influence product direction and secure early access for priority customers.

• Build strategic relationships with adjacent vendors in storage (VAST, WEKA, DDN, Pure, NetApp), networking fabrics, orchestration (Run:ai, Anyscale, Kubernetes ecosystem), observability, and AI security.

• Technical Presales Excellence: Lead complex technical discovery sessions, solutioning workshops, and executive briefings for strategic accounts across regions and verticals.

• Own deep technical validation, sizing, and configuration across AI training, fine-tuning, inference, and RAG workloads.

• Review and approve major proposals and statements of work for technical soundness, deliverability, and commercial risk.

• Represent Trace3 at OEM events, industry conferences, and customer advisory boards.

• Innovation & Thought Leadership: Shape Trace3's public point of view on AI factory design, AI readiness, and infrastructure modernization through whitepapers, reference designs, podcasts, and speaking engagements.

• Track AI infrastructure trends including emerging accelerators, disaggregated memory, liquid and rear-door cooling, rack-scale designs, and sovereign AI.

• Contribute to Trace3's broader AI Strategy and services planning by advising on infrastructure implications of services, managed services, and consulting motions.

• Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner with Services Delivery to ensure every presales design transitions cleanly into deployable, supportable engagements.

• Partner with Sales Leadership to align presales coverage to priority accounts and opportunities.

• Represent AI Platforms in the Apollo Value Creation Plan AI Strategy workstream, contributing to cross-workstream alignment across commercial, services, and digital consulting motions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field; advanced degree preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in enterprise infrastructure, with at least 5+ years hands-on designing and implementing AI, ML, or HPC environments at production scale.
• Demonstrated delivery experience on multi-rack, GPU-dense factory deployments using at least two of the following platform families: NVIDIA DGX or HGX, Cisco AI infrastructure, Dell PowerEdge XE, Super Micro, Lenovo ThinkSystem, HPE ProLiant Compute DL or Cray.
• Deep technical fluency across GPU compute, high-performance networking (InfiniBand, RoCE, NVIDIA Spectrum-X), parallel and scale-out file systems (VAST, WEKA, DDN, Pure, NetApp ONTAP AI), and AI-optimized cooling and power design.
• Familiarity with AI-specific security considerations including model protection, data governance, inference security, and alignment with emerging regulatory frameworks.
• 5+ years of people leadership experience with direct accountability for building and growing technical presales or architecture teams.
• Executive presence with proven ability to engage CxO-level stakeholders at customers and OEM partners.
• Strong track record in a VAR, OEM, hyperscaler, or large enterprise setting with multi-million dollar annual opportunity ownership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex AI infrastructure concepts for non-technical audiences.
• Willingness to travel up to 50% to various locations around the United States as business needs require; valid driver’s license required.