Presales Storage Architect - Unstructured Data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Wokingham; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Hewlett Packard Enterprise seeks an experienced Storage Architect to design enterprise-scale file and S3 object storage solutions for AI, analytics, and data-intensive workloads. The role combines customer-facing consulting with hands-on architecture, POC leadership, and collaboration with product teams.

You will size architectures, validate performance, and translate business requirements into scalable storage designs across on-prem and cloud environments. Occasional travel is required.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience designing, implementing, or supporting enterprise storage and data architectures.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong customer-facing architecture, consulting, or presales experience.
• Strong foundational knowledge of S3 object storage, including buckets, objects, APIs, authentication, data protection, and common application integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of enterprise file protocols, particularly NFS and SMB.
• Experience sizing storage solutions based on capacity, performance, growth, network, and application requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to plan, configure, execute, and troubleshoot technical POCs.
• Understanding of modern AI and analytics data pipelines, including AI inference, RAG, vector databases, data lakes/Lakehouse's, and large-scale analytics workloads.
• Ability to discuss storage within the broader context of data flow, data lifecycle, data management, protection, governance, and application consumption.
• Strong understanding of storage performance concepts including throughput, latency, IOPS, metadata performance, concurrency, and network bandwidth.
• Excellent communication, presentation, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Willingness and ability to travel for customer engagements.
• Experience in technical presales, consulting, solution architecture, or customer advisory roles.

Responsibilities

• Partner with customers to architect scalable file and S3 object storage solutions for AI, analytics, and enterprise workloads.
• Understand data flows, lifecycle requirements, and performance to recommend storage architecture.
• Size storage solutions based on capacity, throughput, latency, network bandwidth, growth, availability, and workload requirements.
• Lead technical workshops, assessments, benchmarks, and hands-on POCs.
• Provide expertise in S3 object storage and foundational knowledge of NFS and SMB.
• Apply AI inference, RAG, data lakes, and analytics pipelines to storage design decisions.
• Collaborate with product management and engineering to translate requirements into product priorities.
• Present architectures and technical guidance to executive and technical audiences.
• Travel as needed to support customers, partners, and strategic opportunities.
• Architect and document enterprise-scale file and object storage solutions.
• Analyze customer data flows, workloads, growth, and data management requirements.
• Lead and execute hands-on POCs validating performance and scalability.
• Design storage architectures for AI inference, RAG, analytics, and data lake workloads.
• Translate customer requirements into actionable product feedback and roadmap recommendations.
• Provide competitive analysis and solution guidance to sales and technical teams.

Skills

S3 object storage

NFS

SMB

AI inference

RAG

Data pipelines

Vector databases

Data lakes

Lakehouse

Performance benchmarking

Cloud storage

Storage sizing

POCs

Presales experience

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Dell PowerScale

ObjectScale

NetApp ONTAP

StorageGRID

VAST Data

Scality

Job description

This role has been designed as 'Hybrid' with a requirement that you will work on average 2 days per week from an HPE office., We're seeking an experienced Storage Architect with strong expertise in unstructured data, AI and analytics workloads, and modern file and object storage architectures. This is a highly visible, customer-facing role with significant influence on solution design, customer adoption, and product strategy. The ideal candidate combines deep storage fundamentals with a strong understanding of how data moves through modern AI and analytics environments. You will help customers design, size, validate, and optimize storage architectures supporting AI inference, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), analytics, data lakes, and other data-intensive workloads.,

• Partner with customers to architect scalable file and S3 object storage solutions for AI, analytics, and enterprise workloads.
• Understand application data flows, data lifecycle requirements, and performance characteristics to recommend the right storage architecture.
• Size storage solutions based on capacity, throughput, latency, network bandwidth, growth, availability, and workload requirements.
• Lead technical workshops, assessments, benchmarks, and hands-on proofs of concept (POCs).
• Provide strong subject matter expertise in S3 object storage and foundational knowledge of NFS and SMB.
• Apply knowledge of AI inference, RAG, data lakes, and analytics pipelines to storage architecture and design decisions.
• Collaborate with product management and engineering to translate customer requirements into product and roadmap priorities.
• Bring competitive knowledge and market awareness to customer discussions and internal strategy.
• Travel as needed to support customers, partners, and strategic opportunities., Architect and document enterprise-scale file and object storage solutions.
• Analyze customer data flows, workloads, growth patterns, and data management requirements.
• Size storage environments for performance, capacity, resiliency, and scalability.
• Lead and execute hands-on POCs validating performance, integration, scalability, and operational requirements.
• Design storage architectures for AI inference, RAG, analytics, and data lake workloads, with consideration for throughput, latency, metadata, network design, and data accessibility.
• Help customers understand how data is ingested, stored, processed, protected, moved, governed, and consumed across modern data pipelines.
• Translate customer requirements and field experience into actionable product feedback and roadmap recommendations.
• Provide competitive analysis, technical positioning, and solution guidance to sales and technical teams.
• Present architectures and technical recommendations to both executive and deeply technical audiences.
• Support strategic presales engagements, RFIs/RFPs, solution sizing, and technical justification.
• 7+ years of experience designing, implementing, or supporting enterprise storage and data architectures.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong customer-facing architecture, consulting, or presales experience.
• Strong foundational knowledge of S3 object storage, including buckets, objects, APIs, authentication, data protection, and common application integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of enterprise file protocols, particularly NFS and SMB.
• Experience sizing storage solutions based on capacity, performance, growth, network, and application requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to plan, configure, execute, and troubleshoot technical POCs.
• Understanding of modern AI and analytics data pipelines, including AI inference, RAG, vector databases, data lakes/Lakehouse's, and large-scale analytics workloads.
• Ability to discuss storage within the broader context of data flow, data lifecycle, data management, protection, governance, and application consumption.
• Strong understanding of storage performance concepts including throughput, latency, IOPS, metadata performance, concurrency, and network bandwidth.
• Excellent communication, presentation, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Willingness and ability to travel for customer engagements.
• Experience in technical presales, consulting, solution architecture, or customer advisory roles.

AI & Analytics Skills:

Strong candidates will have experience with several of the following:

• AI inference and RAG architectures
• Vector databases, embeddings, and retrieval workflows
• Data lakes and Lakehouse architectures
• Analytics platforms and distributed query engines
• GPU-based infrastructure and AI data pipelines
• High-throughput data ingestion and processing
• S3-based application architectures
• Data movement between compute, storage, cloud, and AI platforms
• Performance characterization and workload benchmarking

Storage Technologies & Platforms:

Experience with one or more enterprise file or object storage platforms is preferred, including:

• Dell PowerScale / ObjectScale
• Pure Storage FlashBlade
• NetApp ONTAP / StorageGRID
• VAST Data
• Scality
• Other enterprise file or S3-compatible object storage platforms

Cloud & Competitive Skills:

Experience in any of the following, would be a real plus, including:

• Familiarity with AWS, Azure, and GCP storage services and integration patterns.
• Understanding of hybrid and multi-cloud data architectures.
• Knowledge of modern AI and analytics platforms and their storage requirements.
• Strong awareness of the competitive enterprise file and object storage landscape.
• Experience in technical presales, consulting, solution architecture, or customer advisory roles.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the global edge-to-cloud company advancing the way people live and work. We help companies connect, protect, analyze, and act on their data and applications wherever they live, from edge to cloud, so they can turn insights into outcomes at the speed required to thrive in today's complex world. Our culture thrives on finding new and better ways to accelerate what's next. We know varied backgrounds are valued and succeed here. We have the flexibility to manage our work and personal needs. We make bold moves, together, and are a force for good. If you are looking to stretch and grow your career our culture will embrace you. Open up opportunities with HPE.