Senior Infrastructure Pre-Sales Architect

CXponent; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

CXponent is seeking a strategic Senior Infrastructure Pre-Sales Architect to join our Chicago-area team. You will act as a trusted advisor to enterprise clients, translating complex infrastructure needs into cost-justified solutions built from leading vendors.

Your focus will include multi-cloud strategies, TCO analyses, and hands-on collaboration with vendors, delivery, and sales to shape winning proposals and drive sustainable technology outcomes for customers.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in pre-sales architecture for technology advisory, VAR, MSP, or SI firms.
• Experience with hybrid/multi-cloud environments.
• Ability to translate technical concepts into business value.
• Strong communication and storytelling for executive audiences.
• Experience developing SOWs and BOMs with vendors.

Responsibilities

• Client advisory and financial architecture.
• Lead TCO analyses comparing hyperscalers vs private clouds.
• Document architecture and facilitate solution design with vendors.
• Translate architectures into business cases for CIO/CTO/CFO.
• Lead end-to-end scoping, including SOWs and BOMs with vendors.
• Collaborate with vendors and cross-functional teams.
• Deliver thought leadership on client architectures and vendor solutions.

Skills

Communication

Presentation

Stakeholder management

Autonomy

Problem solving

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

VMware

Nutanix

Job description

Company Overview

CXponent is a premier technology advisory platform providing high-touch brokerage and consulting services. We help enterprise and mid-market organizations plan, select, negotiate, and deploy complex enterprise technology solutions. As a trusted partner and advocate, CXponent guides clients through critical IT roadmaps, simplifies vendor procurement, and minimizes the cost, time, and risk associated with technology investments.

CXponent is a premier technology advisory platform providing high-touch brokerage and consulting services. We help enterprise and mid-market organizations plan, select, negotiate, and deploy complex enterprise technology solutions. As a trusted partner and advocate, CXponent guides clients through critical IT roadmaps, simplifies vendor procurement, and minimizes the cost, time, and risk associated with technology investments.

Our team brings deep expertise across eight specialized technology domains, including AI & Automation, Customer Experience (CX), Cloud Security, Infrastructure, and Managed Services. Having advised clients on over $1 billion in technology spend and successfully implemented more than $100 million in new software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure solutions, CXponent is built on a foundation of data-driven insights, elite industry talent, and rapid scaling. We operate in a collaborative, fast-paced environment where we cut through marketplace noise to deliver true business transformation.

About Our Partner: Shore Capital Partners

Shore Capital Partners, a leading Chicago-based private equity firm focused on microcap and lower-middle-market investments across North America. With over $17 billion in assets under management, Shore specializes in partnering with founders and executive teams to transform high-potential businesses into regional and national industry leaders.Consistently recognized by Inc. Magazine as a Top Founder-Friendly Investor and globally ranked among the top firms for private equity deal volume, Shore provides its portfolio companies with robust operational resources, strategic guidance, and deep capital backing to accelerate growth and industry consolidation.

Position Summary

We are seeking a strategic and technically adept Senior Infrastructure Pre-Sales Architect to join our team. In this role, you will act as a trusted, independent advisor to our clients, helping them navigate complex infrastructure decisions. Your primary focus will be designing tailored solutions across an ecosystem of market leading vendors that meet the customers technical, business and financial needs.

Must have: Experience Operating within a fast-paced Technology Advisor, Value-Added Reseller (VAR), Managed Services Provider (MSP), and/or Systems Integrator (SI) environment, where you bridge the gap between technical reality, business needs and leveraging vendors to get your clients what they need..

Key Responsibilities & Deliverables

• Client Advisory & Financial Architecture
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Analysis: Lead financial modeling engagements to help clients evaluate the economic trade-offs of Hyperscalers (Public Cloud) vs. Private
• Architecture Approach and Strategy: Advise and document our client’s architecture, and facilitate solution design from vendors based on the architecture needs of our customers
• Business Case Development: Translate complex technical architectures into compelling business justifications and financial presentations for C-level executives (CIO, CTO, CFO).
• Solution Architecture & Pre-Sales Engineering
• Discover & Design: Lead deep-dive discovery sessions to understand client business outcomes, technical requirements, and pain points. In a cloud environment, provide guidance on client application workloads to determine the most cost-effective, secure, and performant hosting environments.
• End-to-End Scoping: Author, often with our Vendors, comprehensive Statements of Work (SOWs), High-Level Designs (HLDs), partner with Vendors for Bill of Materials (BOMs), and technical proposals that blend hardware, software, and professional/managed services, including security and an understanding of our vendor ecosystem’s portfolio
• Vendor-Agnostic Advocacy: Maintain an independent worldview to evaluate, recommend, and assemble the absolute best-of-breed solutions for the client, free from rigid vendor bias that comes from the legacy VAR world.
• Collaboration & Ecosystem Leadership
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Partner closely with Client Directors to drive pipeline velocity, increase deal sizes, and achieve revenue targets.
• Delivery Hand-off: Ensure seamless transition of won business from the pre-sales phase to the post-sales delivery and engineering teams.
• Thought Leadership: Establish a strong point of view over time of where client architectures, best practices, and top tier vendor solutions are today and where they are going

Ideal Experience And Qualifications

• Industry Background: Minimum of 7 years of pre-sales architecture experience specifically within a Technology Advisor, VAR, MSP, or Systems Integration (SI) firm.
• Services Integration: Proven track record of architecting complex solutions that successfully wrap hardware/software technology with professional and managed services.
• Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Expertise: Deep architectural understanding of major Hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, or GCP) alongside Private Cloud stacks (e.g., VMware, Nutanix, Pure, etc).
• Core Infrastructure: Strong foundations in traditional data center technologies, including enterprise storage, compute, networking, and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI).
• Financial Literacy: Strong proficiency in CapEx vs. OpEx models (including TCO for Hyperscalers, Private Clouds and Hybrid environments. Foundational grasp of cloud consumption economics, and cloud financial management (FinOps).
• Consultative Mindset: Exceptional communication, presentation, and storytelling skills; ability to command a room ranging from system administrators to CFOs.
• Stakeholder Management: You’ll be working with the trusted clients and long term relationships of experienced Founders and sales people while triangulating with vendors across our ecosystem.
• Autonomy: Ability to thrive in a highly independent, self-driven environment.