AI Strategist - Digital Velocity

Description
At CDW, we make it happen, together. Trust, connection, and commitment are at the heart of how we work together to deliver for our customers. It's why we're coworkers, not just employees. Coworkers who genuinely believe in supporting our customers and one another. We collectively forge our path forward with a level of commitment that speaks to who we are and where we're headed. We're proud to share our story and Make Amazing Happen at CDW. Work in CDW's Digital Velocity (DV) organization. The AI Strategist engages with clients and internal teams to provide coordination of client strategic initiatives and alignment to design and engineering activities for AI transformation and solutions. This role is expected to be a thought leader in the areas of current and near future AI solutions provided for our customers. The AI Strategist is also responsible for working with the DV Office of the CTO (OCTO) and Management to align delivery teams on best practices and upskilling engineering resources
What you will do:
Technology Leadership
* Accurately design and scope AI professional services engagements.
* Maintain deep expertise in their role; Is the "Go To" person for multi-disciplinary and multi-practice AI opportunities.
* Communicates and trains the team on changes in technologies, procedures, solution implementations and approaches based on customer engagements.
* Promotes a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration by organizing knowledge bases, contributing regularly, and encouraging team members to contribute.
* Coaches and mentors team members to improve their technical, consulting, and sales skills.
* Acts as a resource to FSAs for advice and recommendations on technical design issues and product choices.
* Serves in the customer escalation path for technical problem resolution.
* Assist managers with AI aligned new hires, leads shadow assignments; proactively provides assistance and guidance to new hires to accelerate productivity. Sales
* Follows up on implemented solutions and identifies new opportunities that complement the work that was completed.
* Advises team members and sales prior to customer calls and/or sales strategy sessions.
* Articulates to customers the DV Practice (Digital Velocity) value proposition to customers, account managers, and partners and uses it to generate additional revenue opportunities to CDW.
* Initiates new event ideas; collaborates with Partners and Sales to design events that can be replicated within the practice; secures funding to support CDW customer events.
* Delivers presentations and conducts sales conversations with confidence and credibility to C-level clients, both in small meeting and large group formats.
* Develops presentation content for the team.
* Develops assessments, improvements, and demos for presales to use as sales tools, identifies new ideas for cross-sell opportunities, teaches presales and Sales on how to use these tools.
* Collaborates with Partners, Inside Solution Architects (ISA), and Account Executives (AE) to drive mapped opportunities; fine tunes strategies and approaches to achieve greater sales results.
* Operates in a regular cadence with multiple partners to educate, plan, and execute on joint strategies in collaboration with multiple stakeholders (ISA, AE, Sales Manager, Field Sales); understands partner alignment in geography and leads customer opportunity mapping exercises; coordinates on-site partner visits.
* Shares best practices and effective territory planning approaches with peers to leverage successful approaches across the team.
* Shares best practices and tactics for enhancing profitability and closing deals.
* Acts as subject matter expert for marketing activities (e.g., marketing blog, content, references, videos, etc.); produces marketing-type documents and materials (e.g., data sheet, presentation, demo video) to use throughout the Practice. Sales Support
* Manages competing priorities and sets expectations with sales and other stakeholders through proactive communication, planning, and potential for return on investment.
* Leads the development of Statements of Work, RFPs, RFIs, and proposal content for cross-technology solutions with high levels of accuracy and quality.
* Maintains pre-sales pipeline data, develops plans, and takes actions to move opportunities to closure.
* Reviews and monitors efforts and cadence to ensure compliance to scope / budget and communication of progress
What we expect of you:
* Bachelor's degree and 7+ years of experience in deployment of private/public cloud solutions. Or, 11+ years of experience in deployment of private/public cloud solutions
* Previous direct customer consulting experience or equivalent understanding of role responsibilities
* Demonstrated high level understanding of M365 Copilot, Azure AI, Google AI platforms, AWS AI platforms, WatonsX, Github Copilot
* Demonstrated high level understanding of the AI open source trends and emerging development paradigms including but not limited to Huggingface, OpenAI, Anthropic, Bard, Bing Chat, Meta, NVIDIA, Microsoft and IBM's contribution to open source
* Demonstrated knowledge of public cloud platforms, aware of multi-platform solutions and capabilities
* High level understanding of AI application development, Large Language Modes (LLMs), Small Language Models, Data Governance, System Security
* Understanding of prompt engineering best practices
* High level understanding of AI offerings provide by platform providers such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe and other platforms is beneficial
* Comprehensive understanding of agile development paradigms
* Demonstrated ability to speak to business value of AI solutions
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills, must be able to lead client facing conversations to drive success in consulting engagements
* Demonstrate solid interpersonal skills, able to mentor and guide internal project teams and personnel technical development teams
* Ability to understand, remember, and apply oral and/or written instructions or other information.
* Ability to organize thoughts and ideas into understandable terminology.
* Ability to multitask, organize and prioritize.
* Ability to apply common sense while engaging with customers and providing solutions.
* Ability to understand and follow complex instructions and guidelines.
* Previous consulting experience a plus Pay range: $148,000 - $205,600 depending on experience and skill set Annual bonus target of 25% subject to terms and conditions of plan Benefits overview: https://cdw.benefit-info.com/ Salary ranges may be subject to geographic differentials
* We make technology work so people can do great things.
* CDW is a leading multi-brand provider of information technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. A Fortune 500 company and member of the S&P 500 Index, CDW helps its customers to navigate an increasingly complex IT market and maximize return on their technology investments. Together, we unite. Together, we win. Together, we thrive. CDW is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by state and local law.