Senior Partner Solutions Engineer - OEM / EBox Specialist

VAST Data is seeking a talented Senior Partner Solutions Engineer specializing in OEM and eBox to join our dynamic team!

At VAST Data, we are pioneering a revolutionary category in enterprise infrastructure by creating the world's first Operating System for AI.

As we expand deployment options for our VAST AI OS, we are in search of a technical expert to act as the primary resource for VAST deployments on chosen partner hardware, with a specific emphasis on the VAST EBox platform.

This role merges solution architecture, field engineering, product expertise, and strategic customer engagement. You will become a leading expert on VAST AI OS performance, scalability, and operation across various partner hardware platforms, serving as a trusted technical advisor to VAST Sales Engineers, partners, and customers.

The Role:

The Senior Partner Solutions Engineer will lead the technical strategy and ensure the success of VAST's partner-based deployment model.

Your mission is to guide customers, not just in deploying VAST on partner hardware, but in optimizing the platform for peak performance: advising on sizing, performance expectations, the influence of hardware choices on customer experience, and identifying opportunities for customization that can enhance strategic deployments.

You will support VAST Sales Engineers and technical teams within partner organizations throughout the sales process, serving as the go-to authority for EBox-based solutions. For deployments that are broadly applicable, you will offer architectural guidance and best practices. For our most pivotal opportunities, you will take an active role in designing solutions, recommending customizations, validating readiness, and ensuring seamless deployment.

Success in this position means making the deployment of VAST on partner hardware a reliable, high-performance, and distinct customer experience.

What You'll Do:
• Act as VAST's technical expert for EBox and other partner-based deployment strategies.
• Serve as an escalation point and trusted advisor for VAST Sales Engineers creating solutions on partner hardware.
• Engage in strategic customer initiatives that showcase the technical and economic advantages of deploying the VAST AI OS on partner platforms.
• Analyze and design solutions based on customer workloads, performance goals, capacity needs, and infrastructure limitations.
• Establish clear expectations regarding performance, scalability, reliability, and operational experience across supported hardware setups.
• Gain insights into how server, networking, storage media, and configuration choices impact VAST performance and customer satisfaction.
• Recommend and validate platform customizations for key opportunities, considering their impact on performance, support, lifecycle management, and operations.
• Guide customers and partners through pre-installation assessments, infrastructure validations, and deployment planning.
• Create tailored installation and success plans for complex or critical deployments.
• Lead or coordinate the troubleshooting of intricate deployment issues involving hardware, networking, configurations, and VAST software.
• Collaborate closely with Support, Engineering, and Product teams to resolve field issues and evolve product and process improvements based on deployment experiences.
• Develop repeatable architectures, deployment guidelines, sizing methodologies, and technical resources that empower the broader SE and partner ecosystem to function independently.
• Support VAST Amplify and other software-defined deployment models that enhance the VAST AI OS across customer-selected infrastructures.

Requirements:
• Exceptional technical expertise in enterprise infrastructure, with an understanding of how hardware, networking, and distributed software function as an integrated system.
• Extensive hands-on experience in deploying, tuning, and troubleshooting advanced infrastructure in production data centers.
• Comprehensive knowledge of enterprise storage, distributed systems, software-defined infrastructure, and server architecture.
• Profound networking skills, including the ability to troubleshoot connectivity, configuration, topology, and performance issues.
• Ability to translate workload requirements into infrastructure sizing, architecture, and realistic performance assessments.
• Experience evaluating the implications of hardware or configuration modifications on system performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Strong instinct for troubleshooting and isolating complex issues across hardware, networking, firmware, and software layers.
• Credibility and communication skills to establish yourself as a technical authority for seasoned Sales Engineers, customers, and partner engineering teams.
• Comfort working between high-level architectural discussions and hands-on technical problem resolution.
• A background in sales engineering, field engineering, professional services, implementation, support engineering, or a similar customer-oriented technical role.
• Experience with OEM server platforms and/or enterprise storage technologies is highly desirable.
• Willingness to travel to key customer and partner locations across the United States as needed.

Ideal Background:

The ideal candidate fuses the technical acumen of a senior field, services, or support engineer with the architectural skills and customer engagement presence of an experienced Sales Engineer.

Strong candidates may derive from enterprise infrastructure, storage, networking, or software-defined systems sectors. More importantly, the ability to become a true platform expert is crucial: someone who comprehends how the solution performs in real-world scenarios, confidently advises other technical teams, and takes ownership to ensure strategic customer deployments succeed.