Solutions Architect

Company Description

Zayo provides mission-critical bandwidth to the world’s most impactful companies, fueling the innovations that are transforming our society. Zayo’s 133,000-mile network in North America and Europe includes extensive metro connectivity to thousands of buildings and data centers. Zayo’s communications infrastructure solutions include dark fiber, private data networks, wavelengths, Ethernet, and dedicated Internet access. Zayo serves wireless and wireline carriers, media, tech, content, finance, healthcare and other large enterprises.

Zayo Solutions Architects are critical to driving mutual success for Zayo and our customers. These technologists serve as trusted business partners to global enterprises to reveal what’s possible to make their businesses run better, faster, and smarter.

In this role you will be the trusted expert in hybrid networks, information security, managed services and Zayo’s products, consulting with customers to collaboratively architect solutions to business challenges that require a breadth of technologies and often include extensive collaboration with third parties. Using a combination of your technical, sales and communication skills you will engage in conversations with business and technical leaders in the customer’s ecosystem, including other technology providers, consultants and advisors to determine solution alternatives and craft recommendations on the best options for the customer. This will include discovery of desired business outcomes, the technical, operational, financial and human obstacles inhibiting those outcomes and determining avenues for overcoming those challenges.

Collaborating with Solution Engineering team members you’ll lead Zayo’s design work to create the solution being recommended to the customer. In concert with the other members of the sales team, you will present your work as a compelling solution that drives business value for the customer. You will be broadly knowledgeable across the Zayo portfolio and work with customers to ensure the full extent of Zayo’s capabilities are incorporated into the recommended solutions. As a senior member of the team, you will work on the largest and most complex customer designs and you will mentor others, sharing the expertise you’ve gained during your career to make the entire Zayo team stronger and more valuable to our customers.

Responsibilities: 

Sales

• Apply your sophisticated business acumen to thoroughly understand customer business challenges, goals, and environment

• Keep abreast of technology industry trends including the competitive landscape and emerging technologies in order to best position Zayo in the marketplace.

• Provide guidance and counsel in customer meetings throughout the sales cycle from discovery through close

• Develop strong relationships with customer’s technical buyers and business influencers to identify and create opportunities and drive them to closure

• Build and communicate the customer-specific value proposition with client executives and key partners, articulating how all aspects of the solution contribute to achieving each customer’s desired business outcomes

• Write proposals that articulate the business and technical value of architected solutions

Solution Design

• Analyze customer requirements to determine the best mix of Zayo and third party services to meet their needs and solve their problems.

• Design the right solution options, optimizing the mix of capabilities, resiliency and cost to meet the customer’s needs, applying your expertise of local to global services

• Employ your exceptional cross-functional leadership skills to manage design teams that include members of multiple departments and project manage complex and iterative designs to completion

• Work cross-functionally to ensure the entire solution, including Zayo and third party elements can be delivered and supported with a high quality customer experience

• Document and diagram solutions to clearly articulate the business benefits

• Participate in the creation and delivery of compelling face-to-face sales presentations 

• Mentor and guide peers developing their solution architecture skills

Education

• Educate and advise customers on key technology and industry trends

• Actively participate in bidirectional knowledge sharing with your Zayo and Zayo’s business partner peers 

• Help develop the industry and technology acumen of your sales counterparts

• Invest in yourself through continuing education, both formal and informal

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or related field; or equivalent business or military experience

• Highly technical and analytical, 7+ years of experience in solution architecture and prerequisite roles focused on software, information technology and/or telecommunications

• Industry certifications in cloud, system architecture, data analytics and/or communications

• Excellent communication skills - written, verbal, listening, reasoning and objection handling

• Proficient knowledge and use of common business applications including the Google and/or Microsoft suites

• Self-motivated and comfortable working autonomously and effectively on multiple projects and collaborating effectively with team members from multiple disciplines

• Ability to handle ambiguity, and anticipate and quickly react to changes in a fast-paced environment.

• Experience developing and delivering technical training programs

• Technical fluency in networking including optical, routing, switching, software-defined networks, network function virtualization, network security, load balancing and high availability

• Understanding of business continuity and disaster recovery concepts and experience in designing for a variety resiliency requirements

• Knowledge of common enterprise applications, application performance requirements, application and data architectures, Saas and PaaS deployment models, public, private and hybrid clouds and information security concepts and technologies

• Ability to create technical designs and diagrams of customer solutions and articulate the design concepts to technical and business audiences

• A results-oriented mindset

Base pay range: $110,400 - $160,000, commensurate with experience.

Benefits, Rewards & Wellness

• Excellent Health, Dental & Vision Insurance

• Retirement 401(k) Savings Plan

• Fitness membership discounts

• Generous paid time off policy including paid parental leave

Zayo provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.