Principal Data Center Solutions Architect

Iron Bow Technologies is for people who believe trust is paramount, transformation is embraced, and the future is here, because "What we do matters!"

We are a next generation solutions provider, delivering mission success across government, healthcare, and commercial industries. Iron Bow relies on our passionate people, long standing partnerships, and strategic thinking to solve your most critical challenges.

Whether we team with clients, colleagues, or partners, we put each other first. It's The Iron Bow Way.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Iron Bow is seeking a Principal Data Center Solutions Architect with deep enterprise data center, server, virtualization, and hybrid cloud expertise to join the CTO office's Data Center and Cloud practice. This role will provide technical leadership and sales support for infrastructure modernization initiatives, delivering subject matter expertise across compute, virtualization, workload migration, storage, networking, data protection, and physical data center design. The architect will design advanced multivendor solutions leveraging technologies including VMware vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and the broader Red Hat ecosystem, Nutanix, and Iron Bow's strategic partner technologies and services.

HOW YOU'LL MAKE AN IMPACT

• Actively research, evaluate, and drive next-generation enterprise data center and hybrid cloud technologies to solve customer mission and business needs
• Build and develop relationships with strategic OEM and partner communities across virtualization, compute, storage, networking, data protection, and data center facilities
• Lead discovery, assessment, architecture, and solution development for complex data center modernization, consolidation, platform transition, and migration initiatives
• Architect multivendor server and virtualization solutions spanning VMware vSphere and VCF, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, Nutanix Cloud Platform and AHV, and their supporting management and automation ecosystems
• Develop practical workload placement and migration strategies that include dependency discovery, compatibility analysis, pilot design, migration waves, backup and restore validation, cutover, rollback, training, and operational handoff
• Design compute platforms using Cisco UCS and Intersight, Dell PowerEdge and OpenManage Enterprise, HPE ProLiant and OneView/iLO, and adjacent ecosystem technologies
• Integrate data center networking, storage, data protection, disaster recovery, observability, and security requirements into end-to-end architectures
• Incorporate rack space, power, cooling, cabling, resiliency, lifecycle, and site constraints into solution designs, bills of material, and implementation plans
• Provide pre-sales support for infrastructure engagements and serve as a technical point of contact for critical customer escalations and post-sales consultations
• Support RFQs, RFPs, technical proposal volumes, LOEs, bills of material, and both high-level and low-level design documentation
• Develop and deliver technical proposals, whitepapers, presentations, demonstrations, workshops, and sales collateral for Iron Bow solutions and offerings
• Enable sales teams, post-sales architects, engineers, and partners through proactive engagement, repeatable architectures, and technical mentoring
• Lead and mentor other engineers while establishing architecture standards, design-review practices, and technical quality controls
• Present and evangelize data center and cloud trends, platform roadmaps, support and licensing considerations, and their implications for each Business Unit

SKILLS THAT DRIVE SUCCESS

• 15+ years of focused engineering or consulting experience with enterprise server, virtualization, data center, and hybrid cloud technologies in both pre-sales and post-sales capacities
• 15+ years of IT consulting experience supporting a diverse client base with an emphasis on Department of War, including complex multistakeholder and mission-critical environments
• Ability to architect advanced multivendor compute and virtualization solutions for large government agencies and enterprise customers
• Expert-level architecture and hands-on familiarity with VMware vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation, including lifecycle management, availability, performance, networking, storage, operations, and migration
• Strong expertise with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and supporting Red Hat ecosystem, including RHEL, OpenShift Container Platform, KVM, Ansible Automation Platform, OpenShift Data Foundation/Ceph, Advanced Cluster Management, and Migration Toolkit for Virtualization
• Strong expertise with Nutanix Cloud Platform, AOS, AHV, Prism, resiliency and failure-domain design, capacity planning, lifecycle operations, and Nutanix Move
• Demonstrated experience assessing and migrating production workloads among VMware, OpenShift Virtualization, and Nutanix using disciplined discovery, dependency mapping, compatibility testing, pilot waves, data protection, maintenance-window planning, rollback, and operational handoff
• Deep server hardware familiarity with Cisco UCS Manager and Intersight, Dell PowerEdge, iDRAC and OpenManage Enterprise, and HPE ProLiant, iLO and OneView
• Working architecture knowledge of data center networking and storage, including LAN and SAN design, leaf-spine architectures, VLAN/VRF and EVPN/VXLAN concepts, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, NVMe, multipathing, replication, and data protection platforms such as Veeam, Rubrik, or Commvault
• Experience translating rack elevation, space, power, PDU/UPS, cooling, airflow, cabling, redundancy, floor capacity, and site lifecycle constraints into implementable data center designs
• Strong capacity-planning and resiliency skills, including N+1 design, CPU and memory sizing, workload-specific oversubscription, failure-safe storage capacity, rebuild headroom, performance validation, and growth planning
• Experience in technical architecture design, implementation planning, project leadership, proof-of-concept execution, and the development of high-level and low-level design documentation
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including executive presentations, whiteboarding, technical diagramming, proposals, spreadsheets, and slide presentations
• Strong attention to detail with the ability to manage multiple pursuits and projects, prioritize competing deadlines, and follow through on commitments
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, mathematics, electrical engineering, information technology, or an equivalent technical discipline required
• Expert and vendor certifications are highly desired, such as VCDX/VCAP/VCP, RHCA/RHCE or Red Hat OpenShift credentials, Nutanix NPX/NCM, CCIE Data Center, and relevant Cisco, Dell, HPE, storage, data protection, or cloud certifications
• Federal security clearance is highly desired

WHAT SETS YOU APART

• Strong experience supporting a diverse client base with an emphasis on Department of War, and a desired Secret clearance or higher
• A proven record of leading low-risk migrations for business- or mission-critical workloads across competing virtualization platforms without treating tier-one applications as simple lift-and-shift efforts
• The ability to connect hands-on engineering detail with executive strategy, platform roadmaps, operational readiness, licensing and financial tradeoffs, and a credible phased adoption plan
• Experience building reusable reference architectures, migration factories, lab or proof-of-concept environments, and enablement programs that improve delivery quality and scale

TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS

• Candidates are required to be based in the VA/MD/DC metropolitan area, with up to 33% travel required

WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT

The Iron Bow CTO office is responsible for incubating and bringing to market influential new ideas and solutions both to our customers and even into the product teams of our OEM partners. Our team is not just full of your average technical pre-sales experts; we have patent-holders, trademarks, and thought leaders that drive truly impactful changes across multiple market segments. We are rapidly growing, and your opportunity to join this industry-leading organization is now.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS INFORMATION:

The initial base salary range for this position is $180K to $200K. In addition to base salary, this role offers a competitive on-target earnings (OTE) structure, with strong upside potential. Our compensation plans are designed to reward success, drive growth, and recognize the impact our sales teams make in the market.

At Iron Bow, we invest in our people and their success. We offer a comprehensive benefits package that may include medical, dental, and vision coverage, a 401(k) plan, paid time off, and additional wellness and financial benefits. An overview of our benefits is available on our careers page.

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OUR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER COMMITMENT

Iron Bow Technologies is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Iron Bow are based on relevant business considerations, such as operational needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, status as a protected veteran or any other characteristic prohibited by law. Iron Bow will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.