Sales Engineer Data Center & AI Infrastructure

BNS, Inc. is a data center infrastructure services firm headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon. They are seeking a Sales Engineer to serve as the technical lead on data center infrastructure pursuits, responsible for technical discovery, solution design, estimating, and customer-facing technical leadership.

Responsibilities:

• Lead technical discovery with customer network engineering, data center operations, and capital project teams to establish current state, constraints, and success criteria
• Own site walks and physical surveys; capture rack elevations, pathway conditions, port counts, cable plant condition, and access and safety constraints
• Perform fabric-state baselining and dependency analysis using customer topology data, LLDP/CDP and fabric diagnostic exports, and as-built documentation — and identify where the as-builts diverge from reality
• Surface technical risk early and honestly: single-homed dependencies, undocumented shared-fate paths, access constraints, and delivery assumptions that will not hold
• Recommend qualification or disqualification on technical and delivery grounds; the Business Development Manager makes the pursuit call
• Design the deployment approach: phasing, sequencing, staffing model, shift patterns, and site logistics
• Build labor estimates by role, phase, and hour — the basis of every fixed-bid and time-and-materials proposal BNS issues
• Produce bills of material and takeoffs for cabling, conveyance, optics, test equipment, and contingency spares; source vendor pricing and confirm lead times, with particular attention to optics and cable availability against the customer's schedule
• Own bid workbook construction, and validate that the estimate, the scope narrative, and the delivery plan describe the same engagement
• Model alternatives and trade-offs so the customer sees a considered set of options rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it number
• Author the technical sections of proposals and statements of work: approach, scope, execution methodology, deliverables, assumptions, exclusions, and acceptance criteria. The Business Development Manager owns pricing basis and commercial terms
• Write assumptions and exclusions with the precision that prevents disputes later — this is where margin is protected or lost
• Respond to RFPs, RFIs, and customer technical questionnaires, including security, safety, and compliance sections
• Price change orders during delivery when scope evolves; the Business Development Manager secures written customer authorization
• Maintain and improve reusable proposal content, reference architectures, estimating templates, and standard scope language
• Present the BNS approach to customer engineering and operations audiences with the depth to withstand scrutiny from senior network engineers
• Run technical workshops, design sessions, and whiteboard reviews during the pursuit
• Demonstrate and position the OpusWorks platform, including its integration with customer fabric diagnostics, monitoring, and ticketing systems
• Serve as the technical point of contact throughout the sales cycle, and as a trusted advisor rather than a product presenter
• Co-lead the formal handoff to delivery and project management at contract signature, covering estimate basis, assumptions, risks, and commitments made during the sale
• Stay engaged through project mobilization to preserve continuity and resolve scope questions
• Feed actual delivery outcomes back into the estimating model — close the loop between what was quoted and what it took
• Keep technical scope, estimate versions, and solution notes current in the CRM alongside the Business Development Manager's commercial record
• Support Business Development Managers with technical enablement so they can qualify and lead early conversations without escalating every question
• Track technology and market developments — fabric architectures, optics, cabling standards, AI cluster deployment patterns — and bring that back to the team

Requirements:

• Five or more years in a technical role within data center infrastructure, network deployment, structured cabling, or critical facilities, including at least two years in a customer-facing pre-sales, solution architecture, or technical consulting capacity
• Deep hands-on expertise in one of the following two areas, and working familiarity with the other: Data center networking: leaf-spine and top-of-rack fabric design, BGP, ECMP, VLAN and VXLAN, EVPN, and switch platforms from at least one major vendor (Arista, Cisco, Juniper, NVIDIA/Mellanox, or comparable). Structured cabling and physical infrastructure: fiber and copper media types, polarity and breakout schemes, pathway and space design, TIA-942 distribution areas, labeling and documentation standards, and installation practice at data hall scale
• Demonstrated estimating experience: you have built labor and material estimates that were sold and delivered against, and you have seen how they performed
• Strong technical writing. You can produce a scope of work, method of procedure, or design document that a customer engineer respects and a project manager can execute from
• Ability to lead a technical conversation with senior network engineers and data center operations leadership, and to explain the same solution credibly to a procurement or finance audience
• Ability to travel 30–40% to customer sites, active data halls, and construction environments, and to obtain site access clearances as required by customers
• Valid driver's license and the ability to travel internationally, including to Canada
• Depth in both data center networking and structured cabling design, rather than one plus familiarity with the other
• Direct experience with InfiniBand or RoCE fabrics, GPU cluster deployment, or AI and HPC infrastructure build-out
• Experience with migration and cutover engineering in live production environments, including rollback design and change advisory processes
• Familiarity with configuration validation and intent tooling such as Batfish; streaming telemetry via gNMI; and fabric acceptance testing using iPerf and nccl-tests or equivalent collective benchmarks
• Experience with InfiniBand fabric management and diagnostics — NVIDIA UFM, ibdiagnet, or the InfiniBand diagnostics suite — and with network monitoring platforms such as SolarWinds and ticketing integration into Jira
• BICSI RCDD or DCDC; CCNP, JNCIP, or equivalent network certification
• Understanding of data center power and cooling fundamentals sufficient to evaluate physical constraints on a deployment
• Prior experience supporting hyperscaler, colocation, or neocloud customers, and familiarity with their procurement and site access processes