Senior Solution Architect - HPC

CDW; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

CDW UK is seeking a Senior Solution Architect to lead HPC and accelerated compute engagements spanning research computing, AI training, and industry sectors. You will translate customer workloads into high-level technical designs and drive proposals with account teams.

As the technical authority for HPC, you will shape sector-specific solutions for education, life sciences, and private sector customers, and guide workload sizing from pilot projects to production deployments.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• Workload Characterisation & Sizing - Profile customer applications to understand compute, memory, IO or interconnect needs and sizing requirements.

Skills

HPC Expertise

Technical Authority

Sector Specialism

Job description

At CDW, we make it happen, together. Trust, connection, and commitment are at the heart of how we work together to deliver for our customers. It's why we're coworkers, not just employees. Coworkers who genuinely believe in supporting our customers and one another. We collectively forge our path forward with a level of commitment that speaks to who we are and where we're headed. We're proud to share our story and Make Amazing Happen at CDW.

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 sca