Consulting Solution Architect - IBM Mainframe, Z Systems Hardware Support Specialist

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Job Summary:

The Consulting Solution Architect is a field-based technical pre-sales role that focuses on developing comprehensive solutions for CDW customers. This role involves providing consultative guidance, supporting partner product sales, scoping service offerings, and fostering strategic relationships to drive business growth.  In this role you will be working with customers, delivery, and internal sales teams to develop and maintain strategic relationships and be a trusted advisor to grow our IBM Mainframe services business.

The IBM Z Systems Hardware Support Specialist provides technical expertise for the planning, deployment, operation, and ongoing support of IBM Z Systems environments. This role works closely with customers, sales teams, and technical stakeholders to ensure reliable, high-performance mainframe solutions that meet business and operational requirements.

What you will do:

• Develop appropriate assessment and service solutions for CDW customers, including architecture, optimizations, technology health checks, deployment services, and advisory services.
• Collaborate with customers, delivery teams, and internal sales to offer consultative guidance, plan sales strategy, and author statements of work (SOWs).
• Analyze technical and competitive considerations, defining actions to meet customer expectations in the sales cycle by uncovering customer long-term goals and requirements and crafting solutions that build towards the desired end goals.
• Maintain strategic relationships with Customers, Internal Sales & Delivery management, acting as a trusted advisor to drive business growth.
• Maintain relationships with Key strategic partners by maintaining at least 5 partner technical certifications.
• Grow influence in your assigned territory by high levels of engagement with vendors/partners/customers/Sales as a strategic advisor and being seen by teammates as an expert in the field.
• Act as a subject matter expert in multiple families of products and solutions, providing regular contributions to CDW marketing approved online activities, such as LinkedIn, blog posts, online magazine, etc.
• Drive outreach initiatives, technical enablement projects, coaching, and mentoring for other SAs,  Solution Executives, and Field Sellers.
• Mentoring and coaching of solution architects around best practices to engage with coworkers and customers.

• Provide ongoing technical, non-defect support for IBM zSystems hardware and related software components. 
• Deliver education and technical guidance to system programmers and customer technical staff on new IBM zSystems features and capabilities. 
• Support solution development activities, including architecture design, migration planning, implementation, and post-deployment support. 
• Assist with problem analysis and escalation, coordinating with IBM and internal teams as needed to ensure timely resolution. 

• Collaborate closely with CDW Sales Specialists and technical teams to support pre-sales activities related to IBM zSystems servers. 
• Contribute to solution design discussions, helping craft technically sound and customer-aligned IBM zSystems solutions. 
• Develop and deliver presentations, technical documentation, and project plans to support customer engagements and solution proposals. 

What we expect of you:

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of eight years in technical, pre-sales, or post-sale delivery role.
• Motivated, self-starting, and able to independently perform high quality work with minimal guidance.
• Industry knowledge and domain expertise: An SSA should possess domain experti