Advisory Sales Engineer - Strategic AI

Overview

Job Description

As a Sales Engineer, you'll architect high-performance storage solutions that enable customers to achieve their boldest ambitions. Work across finance, pharmaceuticals, education, and physical AI—designing systems that power real-time trading, accelerate drug discovery, enable groundbreaking research, and fuel autonomous systems.

You'll translate complex customer requirements into elegant technical solutions, demonstrate capabilities through POCs and benchmarks, and serve as a trusted advisor throughout the sales cycle.

What You'll Do

Customer Engagement
• Partner with customers to understand their critical data challenges—high-frequency trading, genomics processing, AI model training, or autonomous vehicle sensor fusion
• Translate technical requirements into elegant, scalable storage solutions that exceed expectations
• Act as trusted technical advisor throughout the sales cycle

Solution Design
• Architect storage for AI/ML training, HPC simulations, data analytics, and GPU-accelerated workloads
• Design for reliability, resilience, security, and scale—balancing performance with data protection
• Create BOMs, system architectures, and technical proposals for complex RFPs
• Conduct live demos, POCs, and performance benchmarking
• Integrate with GPU clusters, Kubernetes, cloud platforms, and AI frameworks

Innovation & Growth
• Stay current on AI infrastructure and storage technology trends
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams using field insights
• Mentor team members and contribute to technical thought leadership
• Shape product direction based on customer needs

What You Bring

Technical Foundation (All Levels)
• Strong understanding of storage and data architectures: SAN, NAS, object storage, parallel file systems
• Knowledge of architectural patterns for reliability, resilience, security, and scale
• Understanding of storage and data protocols: S3, POSIX, NFS, SMB
• Familiarity with network protocols: TCP/IP, InfiniBand, RDMA
• Curiosity about massively parallel technologies (Lustre, GPFS, Exascaler)
• Aptitude for AI workloads and how storage enables AI innovation
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to both engineers and executives

Entry Level (0-3 years)
• Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• Exposure to storage/systems through coursework, internships, or projects
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Customer-facing communication skills

Experienced (3+ years)
• 3-8+ years in pre-sales, solutions architecture, or technical consulting
• Proven track record designing storage/infrastructure solutions
• Hands-on experience with enterprise storage systems
• Experience with AI/ML infrastructure, HPC, or high-performance workloads (preferred)
• Success managing complex technical sales cycles

What Sets You Apart
• Genuine curiosity about AI and its impact across industries
• Ownership mindset—you solve problems until they're solved
• Ability to translate technical complexity into business value
• Thrive in fast-evolving technology environments
• Collaborative team player with integrity and empathy

DDN

DDN has a very strong orientation towards these 4 characteristics and any successful employee will demonstrate these capabilities:

Self-Starter - Takes independent action to identify and solve problems. Seeks out relevant information needed to make decisions. Gets involved with new initiatives.

Success/Achievement Orientation - Delivers quality results consistently. Targets, achieves (or exceeds) measurable results. Sets challenging goals, focuses on critical priorities, and is accountable.

Problem Solving - Recognizes problems and responds with a systematic assessment that identifies and addresses cause of issue. Practical, realistic, and resourceful.

Innovative - Builds and improves key business processes that enhance the effectiveness of DDN. Generates new ideas, challenges the status quo, and solves problems creatively.

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