Director, Systems Engineering

Qumulo is the leading provider of enterprise-scale, high-performance data storage and management solutions. Our mission is to help organizations store, manage, and curate massive amounts of unstructured data—simply and efficiently. Our platform powers world-class customers across media & entertainment, healthcare, life sciences, research computing, public sector, and more.

We are seeking a dynamic, customer-facing Director, Systems Engineering (Pre-Sales/Solution Architecture) to lead Qumulo’s team of Pre-Sales Solution Architects. This leader will be responsible for guiding the technical sales strategy, elevating Qumulo’s competitive advantage, and empowering customers to realize the full value of Qumulo’s solutions.

About the Position:
The Director, Systems Engineering (Pre-Sales/Solution Architecture) will lead the technical pre-sales function, managing a team of high-performing Solution Architects who partner closely with Sales to drive new business, expansion, and customer success. This role is both strategic and hands-on—requiring deep technical knowledge of distributed storage systems, strong leadership skills, and exceptional customer engagement abilities.

You will collaborate across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to ensure Qumulo’s technology is clearly articulated, effectively demonstrated, and expertly positioned to solve real customer challenges.

Responsibilities
Team & Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of Pre-Sales Solution Architects across regions and verticals.
• Foster a customer-first, high-performance culture centered around technical excellence, collaboration, and accountability.
• Drive hiring, onboarding, continuous training, and career development programs for the SE team.
• Establish and maintain technical sales best practices, methodologies, and playbooks.

Technical Sales Strategy

• Define and drive Qumulo’s technical pre-sales strategy to support revenue growth, competitive wins, and customer satisfaction.
• Oversee the creation and delivery of compelling product demos, solution designs, technical evaluations, and proof-of-concept (PoC) engagements.
• Ensure alignment between Sales, Product, Engineering and Marketing on customer requirements, use cases, and competitive positioning.
• Partner with Product Management to influence roadmap direction based on real-world customer needs and technical trends.

Customer Engagement

• Serve as an executive technical leader in strategic customer engagements, helping shape solution strategy and ensuring customer confidence.
• Guide SEs in conducting discovery sessions, architectural reviews, sizing and performance analysis, and workload assessments.
• Act as a key escalation point during technical evaluations and PoCs, ensuring successful outcomes.
• Represent Qumulo as a technical expert at customer meetings, industry conferences, webinars, and partner events.

Execution & Operational Excellence

• Drive repeatable, scalable pre-sales processes, tools, and documentation.
• Track SE performance through KPIs involving pipeline support, PoC success rate, competitive wins, and customer satisfaction.
• Ensure the SE organization is trained on the latest Qumulo capabilities, cloud integrations, industry trends, and competitive dynamics, while also maintaining expertise in adjacent and complementary technologies
• Champion continuous improvement efforts across technical messaging, demos, solution architecture, and PoC frameworks.

Qualifications
Required

• 10+ years of experience in systems engineering, solutions architecture, technical pre-sales, or related customer-facing technical roles.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing solutions engineering or technical pre-sales teams.
• Strong expertise in distributed systems, storage architectures, file and object protocols (NFS, SMB, S3), cloud technologies, and performance optimization.
• Demonstrated success leading technical evaluations, PoCs, and architectural design engagements with enterprise customers.
• Excellent communication and executive-level presentation skills.
• Ability to partner effectively with Sales leadership and influence strategic opportunities.

Preferred

• Experience with large-scale unstructured data solutions, data center infrastructure, cloud-native architectures, or hybrid-cloud deployments.
• Prior experience in high-growth technology companies or building/transforming SE organizations.
• Familiarity with verticals such as M&E, healthcare imaging, research computing, or public sector.
• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
• Located in Washington, DC/Virgina
• The annual On-Target Earnings (OTE) for this role is USD $275,000 - $350,000 USD

Benefits & Perks:

• Pre-IPO stock options
• Flexible time-off policy
• HSA and PPO health insurance options
• Dental and Vision insurance
• 401(k) plan
• Choice of an ORCA card or parking subsidy

Equal Opportunity Employer:
Qumulo is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, military status, national origin, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or applicable local law.