Customer Solution Engineering Director
Vertiv · Australia
The Customer Solution Engineering Director is a senior technical leadership role responsible for establishing Vertiv as a trusted engineering partner to strategic data center customers across Asia.
The role leads customer-facing engineering engagement from early-stage customer requirements and infrastructure planning through solution development, technical validation and specification influence.
Working within Product Management, the Director and their team connects customer engineering requirements with Vertiv's system & product portfolio, technology roadmap and engineering capabilities, ensuring that customer needs are translated into technically differentiated, scalable and commercially viable solutions for Vertiv.
The role will work extensively with hyperscalers, colocation providers, consultants, EPCs and other strategic customers, while partnering internally with Product Management, Application Engineering, Sales/Strategic Accounts, Operations and Service.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Customer Solution Engineering Leadership
- Establish and lead the Customer Solution Engineering function for strategic data center customers across Asia.
- Act as the senior technical interface between Vertiv and customer engineering, design and infrastructure teams.
- Engage customers at the early design and planning stage to understand infrastructure strategy, technical requirements and future capacity needs.
- Lead technical discussions covering data center thermal & power management, service and related infrastructure solutions.
- Understand customer engineering challenges and translate them into actionable Vertiv solution requirements.
- Build trusted technical relationships with senior customer engineering and technology stakeholders.
- Serve as a technical escalation point for complex and strategic customer requirements
- Partnership with Sales and Strategic Accounts
- Partner with Strategic Accounts and Sales teams on key customer engagements while maintaining technical independence and credibility.
- Provide technical leadership during major opportunity development and customer design road maps.
- Support technical qualification and solution positioning for strategic opportunities.
- Provide technical input to value engineering, lifecycle cost and total-cost-of-ownership discussions.
- Support Sales in establishing Vertiv as a technical partner rather than a product supplier.
- Ensure customer technical requirements are clearly understood before commercial commitments are made.
- Customer Design and Specification Influence
- Engage with consultants, EPCs and customer engineering teams to influence data center design and technical specifications.
- Develop and communicate Vertiv technical solutions, reference architectures and application guidelines.
- Influence basis-of-design and technical requirements.
- Identify opportunities to position Vertiv technologies & solutions earlier in the customer design cycle.
- Lead technical presentations, engineering workshops, design reviews and technology demonstrations.
- Develop long-term technical engagement programs with strategic customers.
- Voice of Customer to Product Management
- Capture and consolidate customer engineering requirements, pain points and technology priorities.
- Provide structured input to Product Management on portfolio gaps, product enhancements and new technology opportunities.
- Partner with Product Management to prioritize customer-driven product and solution initiatives.
- Identify emerging requirements in data center design.
- Team Engineering Capability
- Build and develop a high-performing regional Customer Solution Engineering organization.
- Establish common engineering engagement processes, tools, standards and governance.
- Develop technical capability across solution architecture, customer engagement and systems positioning.
- Coach the team to operate effectively with senior customer technical stakeholders.
- Ensure close collaboration with Product Management teams.
- Develop succession and capability plans for critical technical talent.
KEY SUCCESS MEASURES
- Sales/Key Account Manager interlocks & increased win rates via the Sales team.
- Strength and depth of technical relationships with strategic data center customers.
- Increased early-stage customer engagement, collaboration and technical influence.
- Increased Vertiv specification / basis-of-design influence.
- .Conversion of Voice of Customer into actionable product and technology initiatives.
- Successful resolution of complex customer engineering requirements.
- Adoption of Vertiv solutions in strategic customer architectures.
- Strengthened differentiation of Vertiv's technology and solutions.
- Effective collaboration between Customer Engineering, Product Management and Sales.
- Development of strong regional Customer Engineering capability.
QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical OR Electrical Engineering or related technical discipline; advanced technical or business qualification preferred.
- 15+ years of experience in data center infrastructure, critical infrastructure, cooling/thermal systems, customer engineering, application engineering, solutions engineering, product management or related technical fields.
- Significant experience engaging directly with data center operators, hyperscalers, colocation providers, consultants and EPCs.
- Strong understanding of data center engineering and infrastructure requirements.
- Demonstrated experience developing, evaluating or influencing data center solution architectures.
- Strong technical knowledge in Thermal or Power Management; broader critical infrastructure knowledge preferred.
- Experience influencing customer specifications, design requirements or basis-of-design.
- Experience translating customer requirements into product, solution or engineering requirements.
- Demonstrated ability to work across Product Management, Engineering and Sales.
- Strong commercial awareness and understanding of strategic customer development.
- Asia experience in a multinational organization.
- Excellent technical communication, presentation and executive stakeholder management skills.
PHYSICAL & ENVIRONMENTAL DEMANDS
- None
TIME TRAVEL REQUIRED
- 25% within Asia, occasional global travel as needed by the business.