We are hiring! The VMware-related work is rocking at Pure Storage and I need your help! We have a new position opened up for a counterpart to me, a VMware-focused Solutions Architect. Apply here:
https://boards.greenhouse.io/purestorage/jobs/150163
A Solutions Architect means a lot of different things, depending on where you are, so let me outline what it means at Pure Storage.
- Responsible for figuring out best practices, this means settings, recommendations, features to use or not use etc. This requires knowledge of the whole IT stack and the ability to test and defend these decisions
- Working with engineering and product management to scope, design and test integration. This could be anything from scripting modules to plugins to SCSI support
- Working with customers to understand requirements and the general needs of your focus area, this is REALLY important. Our SA team has a lot of input on direction when it comes to partner work at Pure Storage, so this input and the ability to define it accurately is paramount
- Presenting skills. This might be executive briefings, trade shows, customer events, internal events, webcasts anything. You will present PPTs, video demos, live demos etc.
- Scripting. Often scripting help is asked by our customers and SAs often help step in to assist with fundamentals
- Blogging, social media. We want our SAs to be active online and seen as resources for information. YouTube videos, GitHub. You name it.
- Writing. Like blogging, documentation is important. White papers and reference architectures come up a lot. Good technical writing skills is required.
- Investigation. We want you playing with new software and hardware, finding helpful features, figuring out how things work, helping identify issues. A lot of projects are, hey here is software A and software B. See what can be done to combine the two. Curiosity is a must.
- Work independently and be a leader. A SA here is very rarely told what to do at Pure Storage, it is often up to them to decide what they need to be doing. This is a nice freedom, but a big responsibility. Certainly plenty of tasks are assigned, but a big portion of your work is self-defined.
- Travel. How much is somewhat up to you. Major tradeshows, Pure User Groups are a semi-requirement. Everything else is up to you.
- Support. We have an amazing support organization, but every so often you will help with troubleshooting or implementation.
- Pre-sales and post-sales support. Presenting once again, WebEx demos, etc. A solid amount of this.
That is the general description. What about this role specifically? Well this is technically a Virtualization SA role, but really it is probably going to be 95% VMware. So Hyper-V experience is great, OpenStack, KVM etc. All great bonuses. The must is VMware experience though. Especially the storage stack.
I don’t need you to know the SCSI command used by VAAI primitives, but a general understanding of what VAAI is at least. What is Storage DRS? SIOC? NMP? vRealize Suite experience is really important too. This is going to be a major focus this year. SRM is a big one too.
PowerCLI and PowerShell is important. Python or Javascript is a nice bonus.
Good understanding of storage in general is important. FC and iSCSI.
Container experience is not required, but this will be increasingly important in the coming year.
But in the end all that really matters is that we want someone who is smart, passionate and great with hands-on work. The desire to get their hands dirty with technology. If you don’t know VMware well but fit this framework and are a great technologist, please apply. You can learn what you need to on the job if need be. We don’t want to miss out on a great person, just because they don’t know SIOC 🙂
My only absolute requirement: PLEASE do not spell VMware like VMWare on your resume or linkedin page. This bothers me.