NETWORK & DATA CENTRE PRESALES ENGINEER

Position Overview

We are seeking an accomplished Network & Data Centre Presales Engineer to translate complex customer requirements into secure, scalable, resilient, and commercially viable infrastructure solutions. Working closely with sales, engineering, project delivery, OEM partners, and customers, the role will lead technical discovery, solution architecture, validation, and proposal development across networking, compute, storage, virtualisation, hyperconverged infrastructure, security, cloud integration, automation, backup, and disaster recovery.

The successful candidate will combine deep technical expertise with strong commercial judgement and executive-level communication. They will own the technical quality of opportunities from qualification through handover, build trusted-adviser relationships, reduce solution risk, and help convert data centre transformation opportunities into profitable, deliverable outcomes.

Key Outcomes and Accountabilities

• Develop technically compliant, competitively differentiated, and implementation-ready solutions that address customer business and operational priorities.

• Improve opportunity conversion by delivering compelling architectures, demonstrations, proofs of concept, and value-based proposals.

• Protect solution margin and delivery quality through accurate discovery, sizing, bill of materials development, assumptions, risk management, and scope control.

• Maintain strong relationships with customers, OEMs, distributors, and internal stakeholders throughout the sales lifecycle.

• Ensure a complete and structured handover to delivery teams, including approved designs, dependencies, exclusions, acceptance criteria, and implementation considerations.

Core Presales Capabilities

• Customer discovery, stakeholder interviews, workload profiling, site assessments, and current-state analysis.

• End-to-end architecture covering data centre networking, compute, storage, virtualisation, HCI, security, backup, disaster recovery, and hybrid cloud integration.

• Capacity planning, performance modelling, availability design, migration planning, and workload placement.

• Requirements traceability, options analysis, solution documentation, diagrams, low-level assumptions, and risk registers.

• RFP/RFQ responses, statements of work, bills of materials, pricing configurations, compliance matrices, and commercial input.

• Customer presentations, whiteboarding sessions, demonstrations, proofs of concept, proofs of value, and technical workshops.

• Business-case development, total cost of ownership and return-on-investment modelling, and phased modernisation roadmaps.

Technical Domains

• Data Centre Networking: spine-and-leaf architecture, Layer 2/Layer 3 fabrics, overlays, segmentation, quality of service, routing, switching, load balancing, and application delivery.

• Cisco ACI: tenants, VRFs, bridge domains, endpoint groups, contracts, multi-pod and multi-site design, migration, operations, and automation.

• Compute: Cisco UCS, Dell Technologies, HPE, blade and rack platforms, fabric interconnects, workload sizing, and management platforms.

• Storage and Data Protection: SAN/NAS architecture, NetApp ONTAP, Dell Unity and PowerStore, HPE storage platforms, backup, replication, recovery, and retention design.

• Virtualisation and HCI: VMware vSphere and vSAN, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, Nutanix, and Cisco hyperconverged platforms.

• Security and Resilience: multi-tenant isolation, east-west security, firewall integration, zero-trust principles, high availability, business continuity, and disaster recovery.

• Automation and Operations: infrastructure as code, scripting, orchestration, configuration management, monitoring, patching, lifecycle management, and operational maturity.

• Hybrid Cloud: connectivity, workload mobility, governance, identity, and integration between on-premises infrastructure and cloud services.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with account teams to qualify opportunities, identify decision criteria, understand customer constraints, and develop the technical win strategy.

• Lead discovery sessions and translate business, application, security, compliance, availability, and performance requirements into clear solution requirements.

• Design integrated multi-vendor architectures and produce solution diagrams, design narratives, sizing outputs, bills of materials, implementation assumptions, and migration approaches.

• Evaluate solution alternatives and recommend the most appropriate option based on technical fit, scalability, resilience, supportability, cost, risk, and customer strategy.

• Configure solutions and pricing through approved OEM and distributor tools, validate compatibility, and coordinate deal registration and vendor support where required.

• Contribute accurate, persuasive technical content to proposals, tenders, compliance responses, presentations, and executive summaries.

• Plan and deliver demonstrations, workshops, proofs of concept, and proofs of value with documented use cases, success criteria, test plans, findings, and recommendations.

• Present solutions to technical and executive audiences, address objections, articulate business value, and establish long-term technical credibility.

• Work with delivery teams to validate feasibility, resource needs, timelines, dependencies, acceptance criteria, and risks before proposal submission and project handover.

• Maintain reusable reference architectures, proposal content, configuration templates, competitive insights, and lessons learned.

• Track relevant technology, licensing, lifecycle, firmware, security, and market developments, and communicate their customer and commercial implications.

• Support pipeline reviews and forecasting by providing timely technical status, solution risks, dependencies, and next actions.

• Comply with organisational governance, quality, information-security, and documentation standards.

Requirements

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in computer science, engineering, information technology, or a related discipline.

• Substantial presales, solutions architecture, consulting, or engineering experience delivering enterprise networking and data centre solutions.

• Demonstrable experience designing complex, multi-vendor environments involving compute, storage, networking, virtualisation, security, and data protection.

• Hands-on experience with technical discovery, capacity planning, solution sizing, architecture documentation, proposal development, and customer presentations.

• Experience creating bills of materials and solution configurations using tools such as Cisco Commerce Workspace and relevant OEM or distributor portals.

• Strong understanding of data centre architecture principles, protocols, dependencies, interoperability, lifecycle management, and operational best practices.

• Working knowledge of commercial concepts including margin, discounting, total cost of ownership, return on investment, risk, and scope management.

• Relevant professional certifications such as CCNP Data Center, VMware Certified Professional, Nutanix, Dell Technologies, HPE, NetApp, or equivalent are highly desirable.

Skills and Behaviours

• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.

• Strong analytical judgement, structured problem-solving, attention to detail, and ability to simplify complex technical concepts.

• Commercial awareness and the ability to balance customer value, technical integrity, delivery practicality, and profitability.

• Customer-first mindset, integrity, accountability, curiosity, collaboration, and confidence under pressure.

• Ability to manage multiple opportunities, prioritise competing deadlines, and work effectively with geographically dispersed teams and partner