Customer Solutions Architect

City Network is one of the leading European providers of IT infrastructure services based on Open Source. Our company provides public, compliant, private, and hybrid cloud solutions based on OpenStack and has data centers around the world. We are a fast-growing company & European leader in infrastructure as a service. We live to get that smile on our customer's face when we solve a problem or simply provide something better than expected. That’s in fact why we go to work the next day.
City Network is part of Iver, meaning that we have more than 1200 colleagues to support us in reaching our goals of becoming the primary European IaaS alternative.
What's this gig about?
As a Customer Solution Architect, you are engaged with customers to help facilitate sales and contracting with the implementation and management of all technical conversations and solutions for new business customers, partners and existing customers. You will also work closely with the Customer Success engagement teams to build relationships, help achieve technical goals and overcome architectural and design challenges with customer cloud environments. To be successful in this role you must be tech-savvy and able to explain technical details and requirements in a human-comprehensible way.
What will I be working on?
You will be responsible for understanding customer cloud infrastructure and DevOps needs and how to meet them with pre-existing tools and services available on City (Compliant) Cloud and OpenStack. In the event a customer's needs are not met by City (Compliant) Cloud, you will take the lead in estimating the level of effort, defining and executing such development projects to deliver customer value.
You will participate in pre-sales conversations with potential City Cloud, driving technical conversations, assessing customer needs, and making recommendations based on available technology and services.
You will act as a technical point of contact between City Network and our Customer's or Partner's engagement teams to answer, resolve and articulate technical issues as needed.
You will provide guidance and solutions when pre-existing tools and services for City (Compliant) Cloud are not going to satisfy the customer's and/or partner's goals.
You will be identifying, defining and managing the technical engagement opportunities and backlog while prioritising work using data to drive the decisions.
You will assist sales and account managers with any technical questions and respective follow up.
You will assist customer's technical requests and resolve technical issues.
You are encouraged as part of your work to provide upstream work to and participate in the OpenStack community ca 20% of your time.



What should I bring?
It is imperative that you have experience in and a clear understanding of the OpenStack platform and how to build and deploy cloud environments using it.
You need to show that you are experienced in working with DevOps tools and methodologies deploying cloud-based software or infrastructure.
You need to have 5+ years of experience in a Solution Architect/Engineer role (or similar capacity) dealing with diverse and technically challenging cloud environment projects.
You are fluent in English - spoken and written. We document everything , so this is important to us.
You need to show fluency in Python, Ansible, Terraform, Markdown and Git.
You must reside and have citizenship within the EU.



Everything else — everything that follows — is a bonus.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and preferably familiarity with Zuul/Gerrit.
Strong organisational skills, ability to work independently and manage multiple projects simultaneously and remotely.
Experience in client support and advisory technical role (Solution architect, system administrator, technical account manager or equivalent).
Database and Kubernetes experience is a big plus.



Educational background
We do not require an academic degree per se but our selection process will rather consider your prior experience and proven skills as required.
Technical certifications in cloud technologies and agile methodologies are beneficial.
We will ask you to share work samples in a public Git repo and/or commits to Open Source repositories.



Who would be my direct manager?
Mikael Nerde - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nerde/, Head of Customer Engagement
What we offer:
Full-time position with 6-months probationary period.
Leave Policy : 6 weeks vacation.
Remote work : We are flexible in regard to your work place & allow you to choose for yourself.



How's work at City Network?
We're growing pretty quickly at this stage, in customers, revenue, and headcount. We are a part of the Iver Group, but continue to operate as a separate unit under the Iver umbrella. That said, we're also solidly profitable. The company has existed for more than 15 years, so don't expect cash-burning startup insanity. This is all a good position to be in but to be candid, just like any other company, we're not perfect.
As a company, we strive to improve and perfect the structure of how we collaborate and communicate. Still, we're not quite where we want to be in that regard. We have to set a pretty high bar here for ourselves, given that our role in the market comes with a great deal of responsibility. So, we are actively looking for people who come with an open mindset and an eagerness to help us all get better.
Suppose you have specific technical expertise on an issue that another team of colleagues is working on. In that case, you should expect to be asked to contribute your knowledge to solve the problem — just as you will expect to get that same support from them when you have an issue of your own to resolve.
City Network has signed a Collective Bargaining Agreement for the Swedish entity and is part of Iver AB.
I'm interested. What's next?
We'd like to hear from you! And we have a few additional questions we would like to ask you. You'll be able to apply for this position until 31st Mar 2022. We will start reviewing and inviting applications as soon as possible after this deadline.
Ready to go? Then please click the " Apply now" job button.
Type of Employment :Full time position
Location : Remote within EU and hybrid if located in Stockholm, Sweden. Role requires some travel to meet customers on location if requested.
Start Date : Immediate / at your earliest convenience