Senior Pre-Sales Systems Engineer, Higher Education (IN/MI)

Everpure; Indiana; On-site; USD 141,000 - 212,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time off

Wellness resources

Company-sponsored team events

Job summary

Everpure, a data platform company, is seeking a Senior Pre-Sales Systems Engineer to support higher education and R1 universities. You will translate complex institutional needs into technology solutions, building business cases and aligning research goals with IT capabilities.

You will engage CIOs, researchers, and procurement, lead evaluations and proofs of concept, and articulate value through total cost of ownership and risk reduction.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience across technology, solution design, and customer-facing roles.
• Pre-sales or customer-facing technical experience.
• Experience with higher education or public sector.
• Familiarity with HPC/AI environments: parallel and distributed file systems, GPU-attached storage, schedulers such as Slurm, data pipelines for genomics, imaging, or simulation.
• Broad technical depth across two or more of: cloud, HPC, AI/ML infra, data management, core infra, analytics, or business apps.
• Track record of selling on value and connecting technology to business outcomes.
• Excellent verbal and written communication; degree in CS/EE or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Understand institutional drivers and translate them into effective tech solutions.
• Connect Everpure tech to measurable research outcomes across stakeholders.
• Build business cases: TCO, space, power, staff time, and current environment costs.
• Support workloads end-to-end from lab instruments to HPC/AI pipelines and archives.
• Lead evaluations, benchmarks, RFI/RFP/RFQ responses; stay current on research computing trends.

Skills

Pre-sales experience

Higher ed knowledge

HPC & AI familiarity

Communication skills

Business value selling

Systems engineering

Education

BS in CS/EE or equivalent

Tools

Slurm scheduling

Job description

Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), a $3.7 billion data platform company, is seeking a Senior Pre-Sales Systems Engineer to support higher education and R1 research universities. This technical leadership role bridges complex institutional environments—from central IT to research computing, HPC, and AI labs—translating technology solutions to measurable research outcomes and institutional priorities.

What You'll Do

• Develop deep understanding of institutional drivers: research priorities, funding cycles, capital versus operating constraints, and decision-making structures across diverse stakeholder groups
• Connect Everpure portfolio and ecosystem technologies to measurable research and institutional outcomes, translating between principal investigators, research computing staff, central IT, CIOs, finance, and procurement
• Build comprehensive business cases alongside technical solutions: total cost of ownership, power and cooling, data center footprint, staff time, and cost of current environment
• Support research workloads end-to-end, from instrument and sequencer output through HPC and AI pipelines to long-term retention and archive, addressing data management, lifecycle, retention, reproducibility, and sponsor requirements
• Lead evaluations, benchmarks, proofs of concept, and system configurations; author RFI, RFP, and RFQ responses; stay current on competitive landscape and research computing trends

What You Need

• 8 or more years of relevant experience across technology, solution design, and customer-facing communication
• Pre-sales or customer-facing technical experience
• Experience with higher education, research computing, academic medical centers, or public sector
• Familiarity with HPC and AI environments: parallel and distributed file systems, GPU-attached storage, schedulers such as Slurm, and data pipelines for genomics, imaging, or simulation
• Broad technical depth across two or more of: cloud, HPC, AI and machine learning infrastructure, data management, core infrastructure, analytics, or financial and business applications
• Track record of selling on value: uncovering customer objectives and connecting technology to business, operational, and financial outcomes
• Ability to hold credible conversations with engineers, architects, executives, data scientists, researchers, finance teams, and procurement; comfort with ambiguity and judgment to challenge assumptions
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills; BS in CS, EE, another technical degree, or equivalent experience

Nice to Have

• Knowledge of current and emerging storage architectures (FC, iSCSI, NAS, SAN, object) and file systems
• Linux, NFS, and distributed Linux environments
• VMware, Ethernet, TCP/IP, and general networking
• AWS, Azure, or GCP, and hybrid or cloud-native architectures
• Containers, Kubernetes, and microservices
• Experience with grant-funded procurement, consortium purchasing, or public sector contract vehicles
• Data-intensive applications such as structured databases (SQL, Oracle) and analytics platforms

Annual base salary range $141,400–$212,100 USD; may be eligible for incentive pay and/or equity. Benefits include flexible time off, wellness resources, and company-sponsored team events.