Senior Director Engineering, Solutions Management

The Senior Director of Solutions Engineering Management will lead the customer-facing technical organization responsible for accelerating adoption of HPE Networking's Data Center portfolio. This leader will build and scale a high-performing global team that engages customers and strategic design partners from technical discovery and architecture through proof of concept, production deployment, and lifecycle expansion. The role will connect field insight to product and engineering priorities, improve execution across complex customer engagements, and help customers realize business value from modern data center, AI-fabric, and cloud-delivered networking solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Set the strategy, operating model, and success measures for the Data Center Solutions Engineering organization in alignment with business, product, and engineering priorities.
• Recruit, develop, and lead a diverse, high-performing management and engineering team with strong technical depth, customer orientation, and execution discipline.
• Own technical engagement across the customer lifecycle, including discovery, solution architecture, demonstrations, proofs of concept, deployment readiness, production adoption, and complex escalations.
• Establish a design-partner model that converts customer requirements, deployment experience, and operational feedback into actionable product and roadmap recommendations.
• Partner with Sales, Product Management, Engineering, Customer Success, Support, and Services to develop integrated account strategies and remove barriers to adoption.
• Guide customers through complex data center and AI networking decisions, including Ethernet fabrics, RDMA/RoCEv2, congestion management, VXLAN/EVPN, automation, observability, and cloud-delivered operations.
• Create repeatable architectures, technical playbooks, validation practices, and field enablement that improve solution quality and reduce time from proof of concept to production.
• Provide executive-level technical leadership during strategic pursuits, customer reviews, design workshops, and critical issue resolution.
• Use business and operational metrics to forecast capacity, prioritize investments, assess pipeline quality, and improve team productivity and customer outcomes.
• Represent customer and field perspectives in portfolio planning while clearly communicating technical tradeoffs, delivery risks, and competitive implications to senior leadership.

Required Qualifications

• Significant leadership experience in Solutions Engineering, Systems Engineering, Sales Engineering, Customer Engineering, or a closely related customer-facing technical function.
• Demonstrated success leading leaders and scaling geographically distributed technical teams in an enterprise technology environment.
• Deep knowledge of data center networking architectures and protocols, including L2/L3, Ethernet switching, VXLAN/EVPN, routing, security, automation, and network operations.
• Experience with AI infrastructure or high-performance networking concepts such as GPU clusters, RDMA/RoCEv2, lossless Ethernet, congestion management, and telemetry is strongly preferred.
• Track record of leading complex proof-of-concept and production deployments and resolving high-impact technical or customer escalations.
• Ability to translate customer needs into solution strategy, product requirements, investment priorities, and clear executive decisions.
• Strong executive communication, influencing, and stakeholder-management skills across customers, partners, engineering, product, sales, and operations.
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience; an advanced degree is preferred.

Leadership Capabilities

• Customer-centered: Builds credibility with technical and executive stakeholders and anchors decisions in customer outcomes.
• Strategic and operational: Connects long-range portfolio direction with disciplined execution, measurable priorities, and accountability.
• Talent builder: Develops strong leaders, raises the technical bar, and creates an inclusive culture of learning and performance.
• Cross-functional integrator: Aligns teams with different priorities and drives decisions through influence rather than authority alone.
• Direct and decisive: Surfaces risks early, challenges assumptions, and makes sound tradeoffs in ambiguous, high-stakes situations.