Senior Virtualization Specialist Solutions Architect - Cross Segment

About the Job:

The Virtualization Specialist Solutions Architect plays an important role in providing deep technical sales support for the execution of Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies related to OpenShift, as well as OpenStack, as an infrastructure platform on bare metal. As OpenShift penetrates further into the infrastructure space, you will be responsible for articulating how organizations can utilize this platform to their advantage in their search for operational efficiency, developer productivity and business continuity. Along with being able to articulate the value of the platform, you will bring deep technical expertise that enables you to design, implement and provide a path-to-production solution that will allow customers to see OpenShift as part of a proven solution that will meet their needs today, as well as into the future. Utilizing containers, virtualization and advanced networking, you will show application teams how to leverage the power of OpenShift or OpenStack as a modern infrastructure platform, enabling them go from plan-to-production on their on-prem assets - as well as migrate from legacy virtualization platforms that are limited in functionality, no longer technically relevant or cost-effective.

You will need to be able to confidently articulate our value proposition to leadership, operations teams, and developers within the account. Using architecture walkthroughs, business-value conversations, technical workshops and implementation of best practices, you will be able to provide an end-to-end solution that leads to design and implementation specific to the customer – allowing them to realize the business value and understand the path forward with Red Hat as a trusted partner.

You will work closely with the Hybrid Platforms BU team, identifying opportunities and gaps, as well as helping to test features on the roadmap. Additionally, you will work closely with customer sales, customer success, consulting services and partner teams to ensure a positive customer experience that results in revenue generation and on-going renewal.  

What you will do

• Work with the customer Account Executive, Sales Specialist, and Solution Architect to identify challenges and blockers to adoption of OpenShift or OpenStack as an infrastructure platform, as well as consumption within new and existing customer accounts.

• Interface with regional sales engineering for account planning and GTM as needed

• Plan, design and execute tailored solutions which will effectively address the above, leveraging additional support and resources from Red Hat as required

• Identify and partner with customer champions, acting as an advocate within both their line-of-business and application development teams, as well as within Red Hat

• Work closely with the product team, providing feedback on both the services and underlying platforms they are running on

• Assist leadership with evolving our Go-To-Market strategy for OpenShift on bare metal adoption, including OpenShift Virtualization and OpenStack

• Based on your first-hand customer experience, work in close coordination with the business development and technical pre-sales teams responsible for our strategic cloud provider and ISV partnerships to identify potential for repeatable and scalable go-to-market offerings

• Facilitate pre and post-sales activities including technical deep dives, proofs of concept, “bake-offs,” internal “DevOpsDays” events, virtualization roadshows,  application portfolio reviews, etc.

• Execute community outreach and customer advocacy activities

What you will bring

• Advanced OpenShift CNI Architecture: Deep expertise in architecting and configuring enterprise container network interfaces, specifically OVN-Kubernetes and integrating Multus CNI to support multi-homed pod and VM environments.

• OpenShift Virtualization Networking: Proven experience designing and implementing advanced networking for virtualized workloads inside OpenShift, including configuring Network Attachment Definitions (NADs) and handling Layer 2/Layer 3 traffic segregation.

• Declarative Node Networking: Strong experience utilizing the NMstate operator to manage host-level network states, including configuring Linux bridges, VLAN tagging, network bonding (LACP), and MTU optimization across bare-metal OpenShift nodes.

• Ingress & Traffic Management: Advanced proficiency in configuring and scaling OpenShift Ingress Controllers and bare-metal ingress providers like MetalLB or hardware load balancers (F5, Citrix).

• Hybrid Cloud & Physical Network Integration: Expert-level understanding of connecting OpenShift environments to traditional data center networks (BGP routing, spine-leaf fabrics) and cloud-native network architectures.

• 4+ years of experience with: containers and container management tools; VMware vSphere, Xen, KVM, Docker, virtualization infrastructure; enterprise automation technologies; containers and micro-services, cloud computing; and developing technical presentations and delivering them to a live audience.

• Deep datacenter experience with integration, storage, and compute expertise.

• Knowledge of authentication systems and how to integrate them into infrastructure platforms for RBAC in the enterprise.

• High availability and disaster recovery expertise, with a proven track record of design and implementation.

• Kubernetes knowledge and experience at scale.

• Understanding of generalized application architectures and how they fit into virtualization or containerization on bare metal infrastructure.

• Experience delivering technical presentations and leading business value sessions.

• Executive presence with public speaking skills

Preferred Certifications

• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization / Red Hat Certified OpenShift Architect.

• Advanced networking certifications (e.g., Cisco CCNP/CCIE, VMware VCIX-NV) paired with equivalent Kubernetes/Cloud Native expertise.