Director/Lead - Datacenter Field Applications Engineering

WHAT YOU DO AT AMD CHANGES EVERYTHING At AMD, our mission is to build great products that accelerate next-generation computing experiences—from AI and data centers, to PCs, gaming and embedded systems. Grounded in a culture of innovation and collaboration, we believe real progress comes from bold ideas, human ingenuity and a shared passion to create something extraordinary. When you join AMD, you’ll discover the real differentiator is our culture. We push the limits of innovation to solve the world’s most important challenges—striving for execution excellence, while being direct, humble, collaborative, and inclusive of diverse perspectives. Join us as we shape the future of AI and beyond. Together, we advance your career. The Role We are looking for our next team member to lead the AMD technical engagement with this strategic Mega Datacenter customer in the Seattle, Washington area. The technical lead will be proficient in server hardware and software technologies and will manage the team of FAEs supporting the account. Responsible for leading all aspects of technical engagement with the customer, accountable to the Field Engineering Director and Sales Team for the account.

Technical Responsibilities With The Account Include

• Collaborating with sales to communicate AMD’s competitive advantages for cloud workloads.
• Concept, architecture, and implementation of new systems around AMD datacenter computing technologies.
• Onsite and remote customer support through the development process, including tools, documentation, implementation, and debug
• Coordinating forward looking strategic technical initiatives/investigations
• Leading performance optimization efforts for CPU, GPU, FPGA, and networking workloads.
• Advocating within AMD for new features/technology to meet customer needs.

There is an emphasis on platform and end user workload optimization, requiring a technical understanding of x86 server platform and processor SOC architecture, the Linux operating system, common cloud and MDC workloads, and performance profiling and monitoring utilities.

The Person Does this sound like you? We'd love to talk!

• Experience managing a customer facing engineering support team.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (written, verbal and presentation) with a balance of hardware, system architecture and application software expertise
• Proven track record in CPU and server system architecture, server benchmarks, GPU computing, FPGA accelerators, and server platform enablement
• Excellent problem-solving, time-management, prioritization, and organizational skills, able to lead complex problems, involving multi-disciplined, multi-functional teams and many priorities at once
• Ability to cultivate strong internal (sales, marketing, engineering) and external (customer) relationships
• Physical requirement: able to lift up to 50 lbs. (racking hardware)
• Willing to travel up to 25%

Key Responsibilities *

• Manage small but growing team of FAEs supporting AWS.
• Articulate the benefits of AMD based technology offerings for the cloud service provider and MDC market verticals
• Provide hands-on, expert-level technical guidance to systems engineers and application developers
• Partner with other AMD subject matter authorities to tackle specific customer challenges
• Lead technical design sessions; architect and detail technical solutions that are aligned with end-user objectives
• Architect, install and test solutions in-house, as needed, to ensure successful deployments and evaluations
• Design and lead the execution of evaluations to ensure a quality solution is delivered, providing technical assistance to sales for overall account strategy based on AMD datacenter solutions
• Gather a solid understanding of the competitive landscape and clearly articulate the technical differentiation and value proposition associated with AMD versus our competitors
• Drive customer feedback into AMD sales, business unit and engineering teams

More Day To Day Will Include

• Provide technical guidance to sales personnel and the customer in the evaluation, design and development of AMD based server and/or data center solutions as identified by sales leadership.
• Partner with sales in uncovering possible application of our products and solutions to meet customer requirements.
• Align with AMD Sales, Architecture, Development, CTO, Business Unit, and other relevant teams as needed to accomplish account goals.
• Perform technical presentations, training and updates for customers, partners, and prospects.
• Translate customer business issues and requirements into technical solution opportunities/engagements that best demonstrate our product offerings.
• Keep abreast of the competitive landscape and clearly articulate the technical differentiation and value proposition associated with AMD versus its competitors.
• Keep up-to-date on relevant competitive solutions and work with internal teams to provide responses where needed
• Assist with the solution development/architectural design to meet specific customer needs.
• Analyze customer product solutions and evaluate product performance based on market requirements.
• Partner with other AMD and vendor domain specialists to build specific customer solutions.
• Install and test solutions in-house, as required, to ensure successful deployments and evaluations.
• Lead technical engagements to support design win opportunities.
• Architect and detail technical solutions that are aligned with customer objectives.
• Lead efforts to define, scope and document technical requirements and customer expectations for opportunities of interest.
• Provide hands-on, expert-level technical assistance to customer development and software teams.
• Define, implement, and manage customer evaluations and Proof of Concepts as needed to demonstrate AMD product features and performance.
• Be a credible authority on direct and indirect product capabilities.

Preferred Experience *

• Proven experience leading a team of customer facing engineers.
• Proven experience as a senior level engineer (or equivalent technical role) balanced with experience in a customer-facing role
• Proven experience in server platform architecture and/or platform development experience
• Proven knowledge in any of these market verticals: cloud computing / benchmarking, high performance computing, networking, software defined storage and data analytics
• Expertise in server software ecosystem in the one or more of these areas: Windows Server, Linux, hypervisors (Linux-KVM and Xen), NGINX, Redis, Apache Web Server, existing cloud offering such as AWS EC2, GCP and Microsoft Azure, and profiling / performance optimization tools
• Hands on experience in the setup and configuration of server systems including software, networking and storage infrastructure, and a proven understanding of server hardware ecosystem at the node, rack and datacenter level
• Experience in application/workload profiling, tuning and performance assessment and UEFI /platform firmware a plus
• Experience with FPGA programming/accelerators a plus
• Someone with the desire to continuously learn

Academic Credentials

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or equivalent (Computer Science or Electrical Engineering preferred)

LOCATION: Seattle, Washington Area

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Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance.

AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee-based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third-party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process. AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available here. This posting is for an existing vacancy.