Senior Solution Architect - HPC
CDW Corporation · London, United Kingdom
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Job Summary
CDW’s Solution Sales organisation is in place to collaborate with sales and to be responsible for delivering high value outcomes and experiences to our existing and prospective customers across a variety of technology growth pillars including Hybrid Platforms, Modern Workspace, Security and Digital Enablement.
The Solution Sales organisation is made up predominantly of specialist sales and various levelsof Architects (presales technical resource).
The role of the Senior Solution Architect is focused on the following core areas:
- Driven overlay resource focused on supporting the delivery of successful financial metrics for the business through technical and services engagements with the customer.
- Solution owner supporting the creation and execution of a customer’s requirements based on their desired business outcome.
Creation of documentation based on your technical design that delivers against the customer’s business needs, targets and KPIs.
The primary purpose of the Senior Solution Architect is to be an overlay support function with high-performance computing (HPC) and accelerated compute specialist knowledge to lead business outcome engagements from start to finish on opportunities from proactive sales engagement with aligned account owners. They focus on research and education, life sciences,
and public sector and sovereign customers. In these sectors, compute capacity directly drives research outcomes, scientific discovery and national capability.
Every engagement starts with the customer's workloads, not the technology. The Senior Solution Architect profiles scientific, engineering and AI workloads to shape the right mix of compute, interconnect, storage, software, facilities and hosting. They direct and validate designs from vendor architects and CDW's engineering teams, acting as the customer's independent technical advocate.
HPC opportunities bring demands beyond a standard infrastructure engagement. These include data centre power and cooling, secure and sovereign research environments, benchmarking with real workloads, and constrained GPU supply. The Senior Solution Architect brings these together into commercially credible proposals, with lifecycle costs that include energy and utilisation.
The role also extends CDW's HPC expertise into AI Factory opportunities, alongside the Principal AI Architect and the Senior Solution Architect – Data Platforms. Together, they help customers move from research and experimentation to production compute at scale.
The Senior Solution Architect is a contributor-level specialist who translates a customer’s business outcome requirements into high-level technical design and sales outcomes.
Leveraging their own and other team members’ vendor expertise and CDW’s service portfolio, they support bids, promote aligned solutions, and contribute to proposal creation and customer presentations with precision and responsiveness.
Senior Solution Architects also support other departments, including Sales, supporting campaigning into accounts with a view to winning future projects, and the OCTO function within CDW, sharing customer insights from project engagements to support engagement with customers in the future.
Success Measures
1. Building strong customer trust in our technical depth and understanding of the HPC
and wider accelerated compute market.
2. Complex solutions and services business won for CDW
3. Customer Engagement and Activity– Highlighted by customer/internal feedback and adhering to SLA’s and/or agreed timeframes throughout an engagement
4. Design Quality and Accuracy – Ensuring the service we provide to the customer meets expectations and also support sales with positive opportunity outcomes
5. Customer Engagement – Regular engagement with existing and prospective
customers, ensuring satisfaction, retention and a profitable outcome for customers and CDW.
What you will do
• HPC Technical Authority – Act as CDW UK's lead technical authority for HPC and accelerated compute across simulation, modelling, research computing and AI training.
• Sector Specialism – Bring a deep understanding of how HPC is architected, operated, governed and used in research and education, life sciences, and the private sector, including sovereign compute. Shape solutions around each sector's user communities, funding cycles and operating models.
• Workload Characterisation & Sizing – Profile customer applications to understand whether each is limited by compute, memory, input/output or interconnect speed, and how it scales. Combine that with the job mix, user numbers and growth plans to set the sizing and architecture logic that underpins pricing.
• Design Assurance & Vendor Orchestration – Direct and validate designs and bills of materials from vendor architects and CDW's wider architect teams, so compute,network fabric, storage, software and facilities work together end to end. Take account of supply, allocation and lead-time constraints, and propose alternatives where availability puts the outcome at risk.
• Facilities & Data Centre Readiness – Assess and design for power, cooling, floor loading and space. This includes high-density racks, direct liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, heat reuse and energy efficiency (power usage effectiveness). Work with facilities, colocation and specialist cooling partners to confirm the site is ready.
• Hosting, Sovereignty & Consumption Models – Advise on on-premises, colocation, sovereign, neocloud and hybrid options, including cloud bursting and GPU-as-a[1]service. Match capital (CapEx), subscription (OpEx) and grant-funded models to the customer's funding, security and sovereignty requirements.
• Secure & Sensitive Research Environments – Shape solutions for sensitive and regulated workloads, including Trusted Research Environments, data residency, and public sector and sovereign assurance requirements. Work with Security architects, who own the security controls.
• Benchmarking & Proofs of Value – Scope and run benchmarks, proofs of concept and vendor test drives using the customer's own workloads, with measurable success criteria for performance, efficiency and time to results.
• Lifecycle, Energy & Research Procurement – Build total cost of ownership models covering energy, cooling, utilisation, licensing, sustainability and refresh over the full system life. Lead the technical response to research and public sector tenders and frameworks, including compliance matrices and clarifications.
Customer Facing
• Solution owner and key contributor, providing business and technical expertise to support broader solution efforts.
• Build trust and clarity by translating customer needs into actionable technical insights.
• Being an experienced and confident presenter to groups of decision makers,
ensuring technical and commercial experience is exacted to the customer
Multi-Vendor / Technology Expertise
• Specialise in multiple technologies that sit within a domain and have broad
knowledge across vendors and product categories to assess compatibility and recommend optimal solutions in line with desired business outcomes
• Utilise vendor-specific tools, training certifications and resources to support
credibility, solution design and validation.
• Strong understanding of technologies eco-system that sit within your aligned Go[1]To-Market/s, with the ability to articulate where required their importance to the project.
Technology Recommendations
• Lead the process of advising the custo