Principal Consultant (VCF SME)

Computacenter North America • Chicago, Irvine, Norcross, Plano, San Francisco

Chicago, Irvine, Norcross, Plano, San Francisco

215695-en_US

About the role
As a Computacenter Principal Consultant, you will help provide transformative technology solutions for the world's most visionary companies. This takes imagination, relentless client service, and tenacity to enable our clients to achieve their goals and delight our customers. Our top-tier partnerships with leading-edge technology manufacturers keep us immersed across the broad spectrum of the IT ecosystem.


Along with implementing and assisting with designing single and multi-vendor technology solutions, you will have the opportunity to work within an industry-leading sales and technical sales team to understand our clients’ needs and craft sustainable roadmaps to achieve their goals.


From strategy to fulfillment and managed services, our engineering-focused solutions help clients leverage technology to achieve more than they ever thought possible. This role emphasizes multiple versions of VCF, delivering high-quality design and implementation of VCF-based private and hybrid cloud solutions.

Annual Salary Range: $175K - $200K USD


What you'll be doing

  • Partner with business leaders to deliver services that support company objectives and that are consistent with Winning Together values.
  • Act as a technical lead in technology solutions by doing the following:
    • Mentoring other Engineers;
    • Lead a team of resources on larger projects;
    • Review the deliverables of other Engineers, as appropriate.
    • Act as a point of escalation;
  • Present technology topics at internal education sessions, industry user group meetings, and/or conferences.
  • Be regarded as a thought leader by recommending new technologies, best practices, and tools that support the growth of the business
  • Ability to assess the Customer environment and make design and solution recommendations.
  • Act as liaison between Pre-Sales and Delivery teams.
  • Provide design, deployment, and implementation services of single or multi-vendor solutions.
  • Handle issues escalated by Consultants and Lead Consultants
  • Ability to troubleshoot multi-vendor issues
  • Lead a Project team
  • Be current with vendor offerings and technology
  • Be available to meet the customer’s IT needs
  • Achievement of utilization targets
  • Embrace and support Computacenter’s mission and core values.
  • Lead architecture, design, deployment, and optimization of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, including core components (SDDC Manager, vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Aria Suite).
  • Integrate advanced VCF 9.0 capabilities—like NVMe memory tiering, global dedupe, self-service developer portals, SecOps dashboards, AI-driven diagnostics—into enterprise environments.
  • Conduct workshops, knowledge transfers, and lead internal technical training and evangelism.
  • Oversee integration with third-party storage, network, security, backup, and automation tools.
  • Create and deliver technical documentation, architectural blueprints, best-practice guidelines, and modernization roadmaps.
  • Participate in or lead pre-sales efforts, technical scoping, proposals, and RFP responses.
  • Maintain deep familiarity with VMware’s evolving VCF portfolio, driving use of advanced services like vDefend, Avi, Private AI, DSM, and integrated automation.
  • Proven expertise—ideally hands-on—with VMware Cloud Foundation (including recent knowledge of VCF 9.0).
  • Strong understanding of vSphere, NSX, vSAN, Aria Suite, and extended VCF services.
  • VMware VCF Architect-level certification (e.g., VMware Certified Specialist – Cloud Foundation 2024) or higher (VCAP, VCDX preferred).
  • Strong architectural, lifecycle management, automation, hybrid cloud, and workload migration experience.
  • Excellent client-facing communication, presentation, and documentation skills.
  • Able to think strategically: aligning VCF implementations with business outcome objectives.
  • Experience in pre-sales, proposal development, and driving new revenue opportunities.
  • Passion for mentorship and developing teams and technical excellence.
  • Willingness to stay current with VCF and broader VMware ecosystem trends, innovations, and certifications.
  • Travel as needed (e.g., up to 20%) to support client engagements.


What you have

  • 10+ years of professional experience in large enterprise environments, with a focus on designing, deploying, and managing complex VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure solutions.
  • Must be proficient in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), with hands-on experience deploying and managing integrated cloud infrastructure solutions, including vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and SDDC
    Manager. Experience with VCF 9.0 a plus.
  • Professional vendor certifications are highly preferred, including:
    • VMware Certified Professional (VCP) – Network Virtualization (NSX)
    • VMware Certified Professional (VCP) – Data Center Virtualization (vSphere)
    • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) certification
  • Legally eligible to work in the United States.
  • Proficiency in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF): Strong understanding of VCF components, including vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and SDDC Manager, with the ability to design and deploy integrated cloud
    infrastructure solutions. Experience with the ARIA Suite is a plus.
  • Communication Skills: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex VCF concepts in customer-facing discussions, internal education sessions, and
    industry conferences.
  • Interpersonal Skills: Strong interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively with Pre-Sales, Delivery, and application teams, ensuring seamless integration of VCF solutions.
  • Customer-Focused Delivery: Demonstrated confidence in delivering customer-facing discussions, providing clear and actionable insights into VCF solutions.
  • Project Leadership: Ability to lead VCF project teams, ensuring alignment with project goals, timelines, and customer expectations.
  • Continuous Learning: Commitment to staying current with VCF offerings, industry trends, and emerging virtualization and networking technologies.
  • Subject matter expert within your focused technology stack
  • Ability to deploy complex multi-technology solutions
  • Ability to participate in the design of complex technical solutions and provide input into bid, project and technical documents
  • Ability to function within a large virtual technical team, with good negotiation skills and who is a self-starter.
  • Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work independently.
  • Experience with Linux and shell scripting (bash/zsh/sh)
  • Experience with troubleshooting in large, complex environments
  • Experience and/or understanding of Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, and High-Availability concepts
  • Experience and/or knowledge of current industry-accepted Backup and Recovery concepts and practices
  • Demonstrated confidence in leading customer-facing discussions.

Why you should choose us

Freedom & trust

At Computacenter, you can really thrive by having the autonomy to do the right thing, for the long-term benefit of your customers in our unique can-do culture. Our Sales professionals are trusted with high- profile customers and manage large-scale, complex projects.

Your work. Your time

Our culture means that you’re free to decide how best to manage your time and workload. All that matters is that you’re delivering your best for our customers and that you pursue a healthy work/life balance.

Celebrating success

Our two-day annual Group Kick-off event is an international sales conference like no other! It’s a great opportunity to network with your peers from Europe, Asia, and beyond. Learn, be inspired, and help celebrate the success of your team and your colleagues.

Showing appreciation & having fun

Great performance is recognized, so too the willingness to help others. Our Bravo! and tenure recognition scheme schemes are just a taste of how we say thank you for all that you do. And when it comes to recognizing success, we love to celebrate. Our company and team events are legendary!

Open communication

Despite our size, we’re an open organization that doesn’t hide behind hierarchy. We communicate regularly, openly, and directly. For us, it’s about being straightforward, delivering, and doing the right thing. Essentially, we’re people dealing with people!

Inclusive workplace

People work best when they bring their whole selves to work; that’s why we see and value you as the individual you are. We take a genuine interest in you that extends beyond skills, knowledge, and experience. Our Employee Impact Groups champion best practice, celebrate diversity, and promote inclusion within our industry.

Personal development

We offer unlimited opportunities for your personal growth and development with a structure that offers clear paths for progression. Our people have advanced to become some of the most successful leaders across the global industry – and we’re proud of this.

Health & wellbeing

Our people are our greatest asset, and we’re passionate about supporting you in feeling good and staying healthy. We offer a comprehensive Employee Assistance Program, a ‘Be well’ app (powered by Humanoo), Mental Health First Aiders, wellbeing webinars, wellness fairs, and much more.

Tuition reimbursement

Interested in continuing your formal education or pursuing various certifications? Computacenter provides up to $5,250 in tuition reimbursement for full time employees. We value continuing education, and this assistance includes tuition, books, registration fees, and more.

Pension & financial security

Thinking ahead, planning for life’s uncertainties, or simply saving for a rainy day? For our people based in the US, we offer automatic enrollment onto our 401(k)-retirement plan with a company match. For our Canadian colleagues we offer enrollment onto a Registered Retirement Savings Plan provided by Canada Life where we’ll match 25% up to 6% of your base earnings. Irrespective of where you’re based, you’ll also have access to our financial advisors who can help you with your retirement planning needs.

Parental leave

If you’re expanding your family, you can utilize our parental leave program that provides twelve weeks of 100% paid leave for birthing parents, and two weeks of paid leave for non-birthing parents. Grow your family with peace of mind as you grow professionally with us.

Flexible benefits

We offer a wide range of benefits that you can tailor to fit you needs. In addition to great medical, dental, and vision coverage options, we also provide 100% company-paid life insurance, and short- and long-term disability insurance. Our easy to navigate employee benefits platform, you’ll have the opportunity to enroll in supplemental life insurance.

You belong

You belong

At Computacenter, we celebrate difference, and it’s important to us that we have a working culture where you can be free to be yourself. We provide an environment where you feel valued, respected, and supported to reach your full potential, and experience a sense of belonging. Because we know when you thrive, we thrive.

As a proud equal opportunities employer, we’re committed to ensuring that there is fair and equal access for everyone. Your application to join the team is considered on its merits regardless of your age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, parenthood, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by law. All that matters to us is that you share our vision and values, and you bring the experience and skills we need.

We welcome applications from disabled people and accept applications in alternative formats.

Winning Together

At Computacenter, we have been writing success stories for more than 40 years. Today, we’re driving digital transformation with over 20,000 employees worldwide. We develop IT strategies, implement new technologies and manage complex infrastructures.

As a proud, independent partner to some of the world’s leading technology providers, our portfolio covers workplace, applications & data, cloud & data center, security, and networking. What’s the secret of our success? Quite simply, it’s our people.

The people who bring their unique skills and perspectives to a diverse and inclusive environment that enables them to reach their full potential.

Winning Together

We are an award-winning employer!