Principal Engineer

About the role 

The Principal Engineer is responsible as the lead engineer for conceptualizing the initial design specifications for large and complex customer projects.  This involves cross-functional and inter-departmental interaction with Computacenter, the customer, and vendor organizations to establish user and/or customer requirements, systems design and architecture, and to estimate costs and resources for engineering projects.  Along with the initial design of the project, the Principal Engineer also works on the technical design throughout the project.  The Principal Engineer leads other engineers in providing post-sales engineering, consulting design, and implementation services related to hardware and software technologies; provides presales support by assisting the development, review, and validation of customer solutions; and performs as a technical lead for multiple hardware and software solutions.  The Principal Engineer is acknowledged as an expert in the field, and is sought after by others for leadership and knowledge of how to design and architect complex solutions that cross a variety of technical domains.

What you’ll be doing 

• Lead customer, vendor, and Computacenter teams in identifying design options for systems infrastructure.
• Lead Pre-sales or Implementation activities by analyzing and identifying customers needs, developing and validating solutions, articulating solutions to customers, and assisting the Sales and Engineering groups with requests for quotes, information, bids, proposals, and statements of work.
• Develop customer presentations and proposals and lead customer-specific demonstrations.  
• Interact with Solutions Architects, other Engineers, and vendors to adjust designs to meet the customer’s needs.
• Provide technical project leadership of multiple projects.
• Interact with and support the project resources assigned to and by the customer and Computacenter.
• Meet or exceed assigned regional objectives.
• Develop levels of effort for systems development and testing.
• Perform the build, configuration, testing, and maintenance of servers, storage, and virtualization and networking related hardware and software.
• Provide direction to other engineers on prioritization and performing research on technical problems. 
• Identify research, analyze, and resolve system malfunctions and operational problems. 
• Develop design/testing/implementation and change control documentation.
• Meet schedules and goals for assigned tasks.
• Develop technology tasks required to successfully deploy, implement, and support a customer solution.
• Provide status reports to management on assigned tasks as required.
• Communicate technical information to non-technical personnel, vertically and horizontally within an organization. 
• Work with other IT management, support personnel, and service providers to solve technical problems.
• Work in conjunction with Solutions Architects and other teams to create, maintain, and publish a set of written procedures and best practices for the delivery of pre and post sales engineering services to customers. 
• Mentor other Engineers.
• Lead a team of resources on larger projects.
• Review the deliverables of Associate Engineers, Engineers, and Senior Engineers, as appropriate.
• Act as a point of escalation.
• Present technology topics at internal education sessions, and industry user group meetings and/or conferences.
• Recommend new technologies, best practices, and tools that support the growth of the business.
• Work with vendors to understand road maps and changes to products and technologies, and the potential impacts on the business and clients. 
• Maintain subject matter expert status with designated vendors.
• Rapidly learn new technologies and paradigms. 
• Provide after-hours on-call support as an escalation engineer.
• Participate in vendor training to maintain and enhance knowledge of existing and new products. 
• Support local vendor relationships within the Region.
• Utilize business management tools for tracking time, expenses and project status and documentation.
• Support Sales efforts to meet Regional financial goals.

 

What you have  

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology or related field, or equivalent experience
• Knowledge of a wide range of hardware and software technologies and professional services solutions.
• Considered a subject matter expert in more than one technology and/or vendor.
• Strong understanding of server, storage, virtualization and networking technologies, procedures, operations, and best practices.
• Minimum of 15 years as an engineering consultant, outside systems engineer, or similar