Senior Solutions Architect (VMware)

Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (On-site)
Language Requirement: Fluent Arabic and English

Key Responsibilities

• Develop trusted relationships with client executives and technical stakeholders, acting as both a business and technical advisor.
• Lead customer workshops focused on VMware technologies, private cloud adoption, data centre modernisation, hybrid cloud architectures, and platform transformation strategies.
• Design and position solutions leveraging VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), vSphere, NSX, VMware Aria Suite, Tanzu, and complementary technologies.
• Assess customer requirements and develop solution architectures that address current and future business objectives.
• Lead complex presales engagements, coordinating with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Product Management, Sales, and Delivery teams.
• Produce high-quality proposals, RFI/RFP responses, bids, and Statements of Work (SoWs) that clearly articulate customer requirements, solution designs, project scope, and delivery effort.
• Provide specialist guidance on VMware platforms, migration strategies, infrastructure transformation, and hybrid cloud adoption.
• Identify buying signals, compelling events, key stakeholders, and potential barriers to successful sales outcomes.
• Anticipate and address technical and commercial objections, reducing customer risk and increasing confidence in Rackspace solutions.
• Advise customers on infrastructure operations, platform governance, cloud strategy, and transformation roadmaps.
• Estimate project effort, resource requirements, and delivery approaches using Agile, Waterfall, or hybrid methodologies.
• Maintain accurate pipeline, opportunity, and customer engagement information within Salesforce.
• Contribute to the development of the wider solutions organisation through mentoring, knowledge sharing, and technical leadership.
• Maintain deep expertise in VMware technologies and stay current with industry developments and market trends.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or a related discipline; alternatively, 10+ years of relevant experience in technical presales, consulting, or solution architecture.
• Extensive experience designing enterprise infrastructure and VMware-based solutions.
• Strong understanding of datacentre and infrastructure modernisation strategies, including virtualisation, workload migration, consolidation, private cloud, and hybrid cloud adoption.
• Proven expertise across VMware technologies, including: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), vSphere, vCenter, NSX, VMware Aria Operations and Automation, and VMware Tanzu.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise infrastructure architectures, including compute, storage, networking, and security.
• Experience designing highly available, scalable, resilient, and secure virtualised environments.
• Understanding of disaster recovery, backup, business continuity, and infrastructure resilience solutions.
• Familiarity with infrastructure automation and orchestration tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Aria Automation, or similar technologies.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes and container platforms, particularly VMware Tanzu, is advantageous.
• Demonstrated success solving complex technical challenges within enterprise VMware, virtualisation, or hybrid cloud environments.
• Strong commercial awareness and the ability to navigate complex customer engagements and negotiations.
• Advanced understanding of industry trends relating to virtualisation, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and data centre transformation.
• Experience using solutioning and presales tools, including Salesforce, proposal management, project scoping, and assessment frameworks.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, whiteboarding, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Strong organisational and time-management skills with the ability to balance multiple opportunities and strategic initiatives.