Senior Solutions Architect - AI, HPC, & Lustre

NetApp; United States; On-site; USD 197,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Retirement plan

Paid time off

Job summary

NetApp’s Solutions Architecture team partners with Enterprise Sales to drive AI, analytics, and HPC conversations with customers, helping design and scale AI/ML workloads and HPC storage architectures using Lustre.

As Senior Solutions Architect for AI, Analytics & Lustre-based HPC Storage, you will guide customers across the United States, spanning on‑prem and NeoCloud/AI hyperscalers, ensuring high-performance data access and GPU utilization.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in Solutions Architecture, pre-sales, or customer-facing technical roles focused on AI/ML, HPC, or high-performance data platforms.
• Hands-on experience with parallel file systems (Lustre preferred) or other HPC storage architectures.
• Experience guiding customers through complex infrastructure transformations and cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI/HPC architecture discussions with Enterprise customers and assess storage bottlenecks.
• Design and present architectures spanning GenAI, distributed training, and HPC workflows.
• Bridge on-prem and NeoCloud/AI hyperscaler GPU environments for high-performance data access.

Skills

Lustre HPC storage

AI/ML frameworks

GPU-accelerated workloads

HPC storage architectures

Tools

NVIDIA DGX

CUDA

NeoCloud

InfiniBand networking

Job description

Own Every Moment at NetApp

At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud.

Own Every Moment at NetApp

At NetApp, your ideas power innovation. We lead in intelligent data infrastructure—delivering unified storage, integrated data services, and solutions that help organizations unlock the full potential of their data, from AI to multicloud. Ready to innovate and contribute to our path to $10B? Here, you'll collaborate with passionate teams, tackle real-world challenges, and see your impact in how customers transform and grow. If you're ready to bring curiosity, creativity, and drive to every moment, NetApp is where your journey begins. Join teams that innovate to elevate, drive results, and excel together across every function.

LOCATION

This is a remote position and can sit anywhere in the United States. All candidates must be willing to very frequently travel across the United States.

Job Summary

NetApp’s Solutions Architecture (SA) team partners with Enterprise Sales to drive advanced AI, analytics, and high-performance computing (HPC) conversations with customers, stepping in when deep technical expertise is required beyond day-to-day SE support. As the Senior Solutions Architect for AI, Analytics & Lustre-based HPC Storage, you will support Enterprise customers across the United States, helping them design and scale AI/ML and data-intensive workloads that depend on ultra-high-performance storage architectures - whether deployed on-premises or across NeoCloud and AI hyperscaler GPU environments. This role is uniquely focused on NetApp’s high-performance storage solutions for Lustre, a parallel file system widely used in HPC and AI environments to deliver extreme throughput, low latency, and scalable access for GPU clusters and large-scale data processing. You will help customers understand how their data infrastructure, particularly workloads requiring massive bandwidth (e.g., model training, simulations, analytics pipelines), can evolve using NetApp’s Lustre-enabled solutions to eliminate storage bottlenecks and maximize GPU utilization. As customers increasingly leverage NeoCloud and AI hyperscaler providers for GPU-dense compute, you will guide them in architecting storage solutions that span on-prem infrastructure and these cloud-based GPU environments to meet their HPC and AI training demands.

What You’ll Do

Customer Engagement & AI / HPC Strategy

• Lead advanced discussions with Enterprise customers around AI, analytics, and high-performance computing (HPC) architectures.
• Assess customer environments, focusing on data-intensive workloads, GPU clusters, and performance bottlenecks in storage pipelines.
• Identify opportunities where parallel file systems like Lustre can accelerate AI training, simulation workloads, and large-scale analytics.
• Present architectures spanning GenAI, distributed training pipelines, high-throughput data ingestion, and HPC workflows.
• Help customers architect and optimize HPC and AI storage solutions that bridge on-premises infrastructure with NeoCloud and AI hyperscaler GPU providers (e.g., CoreWeave, Lambda, Crusoe), ensuring high-performance data access regardless of where compute resides.

Field Partnership & Enablement

• Partner with Client Executives and SEs to align AI + HPC + storage strategy with account plans.
• Enable the field to identify and position opportunities involving:
• GPU saturation challenges
• AI training data pipelines
• HPC simulation and research workloads
• Deliver workshops and technical sessions on AI infrastructure design, GPU/storage balance, and Lustre-based architectures.

Technical Leadership (Lustre + AI Infrastructure Focus)

• Architect high-performance AI and HPC storage solutions leveraging NetApp E-Series and Lustre.
• Provide Design Guidance
• Parallel file systems (Lustre architecture, metadata + object storage separation)
• High-throughput networking (InfiniBand, RDMA, high-speed Ethernet)
• GPU cluster integration (NVIDIA DGX, CUDA ecosystems)
• Data pipelines optimized for large-scale distributed training
• Storage connectivity and data movement strategies for NeoCloud and AI hyperscaler GPU environments
• Design systems that scale to petabyte-level datasets and extreme throughput requirements typical of AI and HPC.
• Support demos, benchmarks, POCs, and pilot environments demonstrating performance at scale and GPU efficiency gains.

Pipeline Development & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Drive pipeline growth focused on AI infrastructure modernization and HPC storage transformation.
• Contribute to RFP/RFI responses emphasizing performance, scalability, and architecture differentiation.
• Share insights with product teams to influence NetApp’s evolving AI and HPC storage portfolio.

Stay Current on Technologies

• Parallel file systems (Lustre, BeeGFS)
• GPU ecosystems (NVIDIA, CUDA, DGX SuperPOD)
• AI/ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow)
• HPC and AI infrastructure trends
• NeoCloud and AI hyperscaler GPU ecosystems (e.g., CoreWeave, Lambda, Crusoe) and their evolving storage requirements
• Maintain deep expertise in NetApp high-performance storage (E-Series, EF-Series) supporting Lustre deployments.

Who You Are

• 7+ years in Solutions Architecture, pre-sales, or customer-facing technical roles with emphasis on AI/ML, HPC, or high-performance data platforms.

Hands-on experience with:

• Parallel file systems (Lustre strongly preferred) or other HPC storage architectures
• GPU-accelerated workloads (NVIDIA ecosystem, distributed training environments)
• AI/ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar)
• Data-intensive workloads such as simulation, modeling, large-scale analytics, or AI training pipelines

Core Technical Strengths: Strong Understanding of the Following

• High-performance storage systems and architectures (block + parallel file systems)
• Data throughput optimization, I/O bottlenecks, and storage scaling strategies
• HPC infrastructure including compute, storage, and high-speed networking
• Knowledge of how parallel file systems enable simultaneous read/write access across distributed nodes, allowing throughput to scale linearly with cluster size. 1

Professional Skills:

• Exceptional communication and ability to translate deep HPC/storage concepts into business value
• Proven ability to guide customers through complex infrastructure transformations
• Experience enabling field teams to position differentiated architecture plays (not just features)
• Strong collaboration across sales, partners, and engineering

Compensation:

The target salary range for this position is 197,200 - 255,200 USD. The salary offered will be determined by the candidate's location, qualifications, experience, and education and may be outside of this range. The range is based on 'On Target Earnings’ (OTE) representing the total potential earnings, which is the sum of the base salary and potential commission earned when performance targets are achieved. Final compensation packages are competitive and in line with industry standards, reflecting a variety of factors, and include a comprehensive benefits package. This may cover Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Retirement or Pension Plans, Paid Time Off, various Leave options, employee stock purchase plan, and/or restricted stocks (RSU’s). These offerings are subject to regional variations and governed by local laws, regulations, and company policies. We will provide detailed information about the specific benefits for your region during the recruitment process. At NetApp, we embrace a hybrid working environment designed to strengthen connection, collaboration, and culture for all employees. This means that most roles will have some level of in-office and/or in-person expectations, which will be shared during the recruitment process.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

NetApp is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination based on age, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, protected veteran status, and any other protected classification.

Why You'll Thrive at NetApp:

At NetApp, you won't wait for the perfect moment—you'll make it. The early planning, the extra thought, the bold idea that turns good into great: That's how our people operate and how we continue to push the boundaries of data infrastructure.

NetApp is the trusted partner for organizations transforming data into opportunity. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, we empower customers to run everything from traditional workloads to enterprise AI with unmatched performance, resilience, and security.

Our culture:

We celebrate mold breakers, bold thinkers, and problem solvers. We reward initiative, impact, and ownership. We provide flexibility so you can balance professional ambition with your personal life. Here, differences are not just welcomed—they drive everything we do. If you're ready to innovate, rise to the challenge, and own every moment - make your next move your best one.

AI Disclosure:

For select roles, some stages of our hiring process may use artificial intelligence tools to help evaluate applications and candidate selection. These tools support—rather than replace—human decision-making.