The primary purpose of the Senior Solution Architect is to be an overlay support function with high-performance computing (HPC) and accelerated compute specialist knowledge to lead business outcome engagements from start to finish on opportunities from proactive sales engagement with aligned account owners. They focus on research and education, life sciences,
and public sector and sovereign customers. In these sectors, compute capacity directly drives research outcomes, scientific discovery and national capability.
Every engagement starts with the customer's workloads, not the technology. The Senior Solution Architect profiles scientific, engineering and AI workloads to shape the right mix of compute, interconnect, storage, software, facilities and hosting. They direct and validate designs from vendor architects and CDW's engineering teams, acting as the customer's independent technical advocate.
HPC opportunities bring demands beyond a standard infrastructure engagement. These include data centre power and cooling, secure and sovereign research environments, benchmarking with real workloads, and constrained GPU supply. The Senior Solution Architect brings these together into commercially credible proposals, with lifecycle costs that include energy and utilisation.
The role also extends CDW's HPC expertise into AI Factory opportunities, alongside the Principal AI Architect and the Senior Solution Architect – Data Platforms. Together, they help customers move from research and experimentation to production compute at scale.
The Senior Solution Architect is a contributor-level specialist who translates a customer’s business outcome requirements into high-level technical design and sales outcomes.
Leveraging their own and other team members’ vendor expertise and CDW’s service portfolio, they support bids, promote aligned solutions, and contribute to proposal creation and customer presentations with precision and responsiveness.
Senior Solution Architects also support other departments, including Sales, supporting campaigning into accounts with a view to winning future projects, and the OCTO function within CDW, sharing customer insights from project engagements to support engagement with customers in the future.
Success Measures
1. Building strong customer trust in our technical depth and understanding of the HPC
and wider accelerated compute market.
2. Complex solutions and services business won for CDW
3. Customer Engagement and Activity– Highlighted by customer/internal feedback and adhering to SLA’s and/or agreed timeframes throughout an engagement
4. Design Quality and Accuracy – Ensuring the service we provide to the customer meets expectations and also support sales with positive opportunity outcomes
5. Customer Engagement – Regular engagement with existing and prospective
customers, ensuring satisfaction, retention and a profitable outcome for customers and CDW.
What you will do
HPC Technical Authority – Act as CDW UK's lead technical authority for HPC and accelerated compute across simulation, modelling, research computing and AI training.
Sector Specialism – Bring a deep understanding of how HPC is architected, operated, governed and used in research and education, life sciences, and the private sector, including sovereign compute. Shape solutions around each sector's user communities, funding cycles and operating models.
Workload Characterisation & Sizing – Profile customer applications to understand whether each is limited by compute, memory, input/output or interconnect speed, and how it scales. Combine that with the job mix, user numbers and growth plans to set the sizing and architecture logic that underpins pricing.
Design Assurance & Vendor Orchestration – Direct and validate designs and bills of materials from vendor architects and CDW's wider architect teams, so compute,network fabric, storage, software and facilities work together end to end. Take account of supply, allocation and lead-time constraints, and propose alternatives where availability puts the outcome at risk.
Facilities & Data Centre Readiness – Assess and design for power, cooling, floor loading and space. This includes high-density racks, direct liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, heat reuse and energy efficiency (power usage effectiveness). Work with facilities, colocation and specialist cooling partners to confirm the site is ready.
Hosting, Sovereignty & Consumption Models – Advise on on-premises, colocation, sovereign, neocloud and hybrid options, including cloud bursting and GPU-as-a[1]service. Match capital (CapEx), subscription (OpEx) and grant-funded models to the customer's funding, security and sovereignty requirements.
Secure & Sensitive Research Environments – Shape solutions for sensitive and regulated workloads, including Trusted Research Environments, data residency, and public sector and sovereign assurance requirements. Work with Security architects, who own the security controls.
Benchmarking & Proofs of Value – Scope and run benchmarks, proofs of concept and vendor test drives using the customer's own workloads, with measurable success criteria for performance, efficiency and time to results.
Lifecycle, Energy & Research Procurement – Build total cost of ownership models covering energy, cooling, utilisation, licensing, sustainability and refresh over the full system life. Lead the technical response to research and public sector tenders and frameworks, including compliance matrices and clarifications.
Customer Facing
Solution owner and key contributor, providing business and technical expertise to support broader solution efforts.
Build trust and clarity by translating customer needs into actionable technical insights.
Being an experienced and confident presenter to groups of decision makers,
ensuring technical and commercial experience is exacted to the customer
Multi-Vendor / Technology Expertise
Specialise in multiple technologies that sit within a domain and have broad
knowledge across vendors and product categories to assess compatibility and recommend optimal solutions in line with desired business outcomes
Utilise vendor-specific tools, training certifications and resources to support
credibility, solution design and validation.
Strong understanding of technologies eco-system that sit within your aligned Go[1]To-Market/s, with the ability to articulate where required their importance to the project.
Technology Recommendations
Lead the process of advising the customer on best technologies and vendors to support their needs based on their desired outcome, including those that may sit outside your teams Go-To-Market/s
Suggest and provide quotes and outcome benefits for product add-ons that
enhance existing customer environments without requiring major redesigns.
Focus on incremental improvements that deliver value and align with the
customer need and CDW’s portfolio.
Capture Requirements
Conduct structured discovery to capture customers technical requirements,
ensuring completeness and clarity.
Validate business requirements by gathering full comprehension of the desired outcome of this and other linked customer projects.
Document findings in line with CDW’s standards to inform design and delivery planning.
Proposal Creation
Using the latest version of the proposal template, support the creation of the
document whilst working with other aligned members of the Solution Sales team
Produce to an exemplary standard, technical high level design documents in line
with the customer requirements
A significant contributor to the creation of defined bid outcomes, providing
support throughout the engagement.
Services
Promote, relevant CDW services in line with the technical design and if required align relevant internal support from Solutions Sales teams if required.
Provide accurate PS costings where relevant, following the internal processes in place.
Commercials
Architecture driven pricing and sizing to ensure opportunities meet the
commercial element of the business outcome
Strategic approach considering relevant options, considering potential
commercial risks to both CDW and the customer
What we expect of you
HPC architecture: CPU and GPU compute (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Arm-based platforms), high-performance interconnects (InfiniBand and high-performance Ethernet, including RoCE), and parallel storage (for example Lustre, WEKA, VAST Data or DDN).
HPC software: workload schedulers (Slurm, PBS Pro or LSF), cluster management, MPI[1]based applications, containers (Apptainer, and Kubernetes for AI), and scientific software environments.
Workload behaviour: how applications are limited by compute, memory, input/output or interconnect speed, and how they scale. How AI training and inference differ from simulation, and how AI Factory reference architectures work.
Data centre facilities: power density, liquid and hybrid cooling, floor loading, energy efficiency (power usage effectiveness), heat reuse and site readiness.
Sector context: how the target sectors fund, procure and govern HPC, including UK national compute programmes and services.
Secure and sovereign compute: Trusted Research Environments, the Five Safes framework, data residency, and public sector assurance requirements.
Hosting and funding models: colocation, sovereign, neocloud, cloud HPC and GPU-as[1]a-service, alongside capital (CapEx), subscription (OpEx) and grant-funded models.
HPC competitive landscape: specialist HPC integrators, vendors selling direct, hyperscalers and neoclouds, and how CDW stands apart from each.
Supply chain: GPU allocation, component constraints (for example memory) and lead times, and the alternatives available when supply puts a deal at risk.
Knowledge of a structured sales process
An understanding of the competitive landscape and the ability to apply that to differentiate CDW against its competition
Key skills needed to succeed in the role
Challenging vendor designs: interpret, question and validate vendor designs and bills of materials, so they work together end to end.
Translating research needs: turn scientific and engineering requirements into architecture and engage credibly with researchers and research software engineers.
HPC cost modelling: build total cost of ownership models covering energy, utilisation,licensing and refresh over the full system life.
Benchmarking: scope benchmarks and interpret the results objectively.
Tender writing: write technical responses to research and public sector tenders, including compliance matrices and clarification responses.
Ability to work collaboratively with sales, delivery teams, and Business Development Managers to support bids and customer engagements.
Applies expertise to ensure relevance and accuracy of documentation and engagement to meet the customers required outcome
Maintains role-aligned certifications and accreditations and actively pursues ongoing learning.
Required experience
Typically 3+ years in HPC, research computing or accelerated compute architecture.
A track record of shaping HPC solutions from workload requirements, with clear examples of your own recommendations and the trade-offs behind them.
Experience in at least one target sector, with working knowledge of the others.
Experience of research or public sector procurement, including tenders and
frameworks.
Experience working with facilities or colocation partners on high-density
deployments.
Minimum of 5 years in a technical consulting, solution architecture, or pre-sales engineering role, ideally within a customer-facing environment.
Experience in building positive working relationships with internal and external customer.
Familiarity of relevant vendor platforms and tools, with the ability to navigate and integrate across ecosystems.
Demonstratable experience of being business outcome lead during customer engagements
Demonstrated success in engaging with customers both remotely and face to face—capturing requirements, presenting solutions, and supporting procurement validation.
Track record of maintaining relevant technical certifications and participating in role[1]aligned training programs to stay current.
Desirable Skills
A degree or postgraduate qualification in a scientific, engineering or computing discipline. Equivalent experience is equally valued.
Experience working in or alongside a national, university or research HPC service, or in life sciences research computing.
Hands-on benchmarking (for example HPL, HPCG, IO500 or MLPerf) and application performance profiling.
Hybrid HPC or cloud bursting on Azure, AWS or Google Cloud.
Relevant certifications, such as: LPIC-3, RHCA, NVIDIA, including the AI Advisor certification.
Data centre design qualifications such as TOGAF
Knowledge of sustainability reporting for high-density computing.
Experience in financial services or quantitative computing, given your current live opportunities.
Experience in a channel, vendor or systems integrator environment, and of creating reference architectures.
CDW is committed to being an AI-fluent organization We’re looking for people who bring curiosity, a learner’s mindset, and a willingness to engage with ever-evolving technology and tools. We value adopting AI as a partner, openness to experimentation, and a shared interest in learning together on AI. Our goal is to create a culture where AI enhances—not replaces—human creativity and decision-making. You don’t need to be an expert today; what matters is your readiness to explore, adapt, and grow with us as we integrate AI responsibly and effectively into our work.
Additionally, CDW is committed to fostering an equitable, transparent, and respectful hiring process for all applicants. During our application process, our goal is to understand your experience, strengths, skills, and qualifications. As an AI forward company, we see AI not just as a tool, but as a catalyst for new ways of thinking, creating, and communicating. We encourage candidates to embrace an AI mindset, one that’s curious, adaptive, and ready to explore what’s possible. We welcome thoughtful use of AI to expand your perspective and elevate how you share your story, while ensuring your application remains rooted in your own background, judgment, and voice.
About Us
CDW is a Fortune 500 technology solutions provider that helps businesses, government, education, and healthcare organizations achieve what’s possible through technology. What makes CDW different isn’t just what we do—it’s how we do it. At CDW we act as one—building trust, speaking candidly, and working together to achieve more. We play to win—focusing on what matters most and delivering for our customers. And we think forward—staying curious, moving fast, and continuously learning. We believe meaningful work happens when people feel supported, heard, and empowered to contribute. That’s why we think of ourselves as coworkers, not just employees—working together to solve complex challenges and deliver real impact for our customers and communities.
As a full‑stack, full‑lifecycle technology partner, CDW brings deep expertise, strong relationships, and broad industry knowledge to help turn ideas into outcomes. When you join CDW, you become part of a collaborative environment where your work matters, your growth is supported, and your contributions help shape what’s next.
Together, we deliver the full promise of what technology can do. Together, we Make Amazing Happen.
CDW is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by state and local law.
