Since 1989, SHI International Corp. has helped organizations change the world through technology. We’ve grown every year since, and today we’re proud to be a $16 billion global provider of IT solutions and services.
Over 17,000 organizations worldwide rely on SHI’s concierge approach to help them solve what’s next. But the heartbeat of SHI is our employees – all 7,000 of them. If you join our team, you’ll enjoy:
Our commitment to diversity, as the largest minority- and woman-owned enterprise in the U.S.
Continuous professional growth and leadership opportunities.
Health, wellness, and financial benefits to offer peace of mind to you and your family.
World-class facilities and the technology you need to thrive – in our offices or yours.
You will be in front of customers from the start, qualifying opportunities, running technical discovery with customer architects and data leaders, designing target platforms, and owning the technical win. Most of the work in front of us is focused on platform build-out and migration, helping enterprises consolidate onto Snowflake from SAP, Oracle, Teradata, and other established estates. This is where we need the strongest expertise.
This is a senior individual contributor role with significant influence over what we build and sell. It is ideal for someone who wants to shape a capability rather than operate within one that is already established.
Role Description
Own the Technical Side of Snowflake Pursuits
Lead qualification, discovery, target architecture design, effort and risk sizing, and development of technical content for proposals and Statements of Work (SOWs).
Build and maintain technical relationships with customer architects and technical stakeholders.
Provide accurate assessments of migration effort, complexity, and risk, helping customers understand the true scope of their transformation initiatives.
Provide Architectural Oversight Through Delivery
Review architecture decisions throughout delivery.
Ensure the delivered solution aligns with what was originally scoped and proposed.
Identify and address risks or issues early in the project lifecycle.
Remain engaged in delivery to maintain accountability for the technical solution and outcomes.
Shape Snowflake Service Offerings
Define the technical content of Snowflake-focused service offerings.
Establish service scope, success criteria, and measurable outcomes.
Determine what evidence demonstrates successful delivery.
Create repeatable frameworks and standards that delivery teams can execute consistently.
Partner with Snowflake
Collaborate directly with Snowflake field teams and specialist architects on joint customer engagements.
Build productive relationships with vendor teams while representing the organization’s technical perspective.
Effectively navigate technical challenges, feedback, and differing viewpoints from Snowflake architects and specialists
Behaviors and Competencies
Willingness to Learn: Can apply new learning to daily work, encourage and facilitate learning in others, and actively make changes to work based on feedback.
Self-Development: Can demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning and adaptability to new ideas and methods.
Leadership: Can take ownership of complex team initiatives, collaborate with others in decision-making processes, and drive team performance.
Strategic Thinking: Can analyze complex situations, anticipate future trends, and align and integrate strategies across departments or functions.
Problem-Solving: Can proactively identify and take ownership of complex problem-solving initiatives, initiate preventative measures, collaborate with others to find solutions, and drive successful outcomes.
Analytical Thinking: Can use advanced analytical techniques to solve complex problems, draw insights, and communicate the solutions effectively.
Prioritization: Can take ownership of complex task management, collaborate with others to align priorities, and drive team efficiency.
Customer-Centric Mindset: Can take ownership of customer-centric initiatives, ensuring products and services align with customer needs. Collaborates with cross-functional teams to integrate customer feedback into product development.
Organization: Can oversee complex projects with multiple moving parts, ensure team alignment with organizational systems, and adapt to changing priorities.
Communication: Can effectively communicate complex ideas and information to diverse audiences, facilitate effective communication between others, and mentor others in effective communication.
Interpersonal Skills: Can communicate effectively, build relationships, resolve conflicts, influence others, and support others in developing their interpersonal skills in major situations.
Skill Level Requirements
Platform and Architecture
Account and environment design
Warehouse and compute architecture
Open table format strategy
Connectivity and data residency design
Cost architecture decisions that impact long-term scalability and affordability
The ability to design platforms that remain operationally and financially sustainable at scale is critical.
Migration and Consolidation
Migrating enterprises from SAP, Oracle, Teradata, SQL Server, appliance platforms, and increasingly other cloud data warehouses
Assessments and migration planning
Wave planning and execution
Schema and workload conversion
Reconciliation and parity validation
Cutover planning and execution
Experience extracting data from tightly licensed ERP environments is highly valuable, including understanding:
Inherited semantic layers
Data extraction challenges
Commercial licensing considerations
This represents the largest body of work anticipated for the practice and requires genuine expertise rather than general familiarity.
Data Engineering and Pipelines
Data ingestion
Data transformation
Pipeline orchestration
Testing frameworks
Data quality instrumentation
Building reliable, production-ready engineering processes rather than proof-of-concept implementations
Semantic and Context Layer
Experience designing and implementing:
Consistent business definitions that can be used across the organization
Shared semantic layers consumable by people, BI tools, and AI agents
Enterprise data models that ensure consistency across downstream consumers
This is an area of increasing investment within Snowflake and an area where many customers require significant guidance.
Governance at the Perimeter
Experience with:
Data classification
Access policies
Data masking
Lineage management
Candidates should understand how Snowflake governance integrates with enterprise governance frameworks and be able to address governance challenges that cross platform boundaries.
Consumption Economics
Strong understanding of:
Credit consumption management
Warehouse sizing
Workload placement strategies
Cost optimization and monitoring
Candidates must be able to speak confidently with customers about platform costs and provide practical guidance on maintaining cost efficiency.
Technical Depth Expectations
Candidates do not need to be equally strong across all six areas; however, they must possess:
Deep expertise in platform architecture
Deep expertise in migration and consolidation
Deep expertise in data engineering
Sufficient proficiency across the remaining areas to identify when specialist support is needed
Other Requirements
Snowflake Expertise
Substantial hands-on Snowflake experience gained through:
A Snowflake partner organization
Snowflake directly
Managing a significant Snowflake environment internally
This role requires Snowflake-specific expertise rather than general data platform leadership experience.
Enterprise Migration Experience
Proven experience delivering enterprise-scale migration and consolidation initiatives.
Ability to discuss at least one major migration engagement in detail, including lessons learned and outcomes.
Experience moving data from SAP and Oracle environments is particularly valuable.
Principal-Level Technical Leadership
Demonstrated success operating at Principal Architect level or equivalent.
Recognized as the senior technical authority in customer engagements.
Trusted to commit organizations to technical approaches, architectures, and delivery scopes.
Presales Experience
Experience in presales environments, or
Delivery leadership experience with demonstrated ability to:
Lead customer discussions
Define scope and approach
Develop proposals and Statements of Work
Stand behind commitments made during the sales process
Vendor Collaboration
Comfortable collaborating with and being challenged by vendor architects and technical specialists.
Certifications
Snowflake certification preferred.
Ability to obtain certification quickly if not already certified.
Certification support and funding are provided
The estimated annual pay range for this position is $195,000 - $250,000 which includes a base salary and bonus. The compensation for this position is dependent on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location and, therefore, will vary from individual to individual. Benefits may include, but are not limited to, medical, vision, dental, 401K, and flexible spending.
Equal Employment Opportunity – M/F/Disability/Protected Veteran Status
SHI International Corp. Chicago, Illinois, USA Office
Chicago, United States
Similar Jobs
What you need to know about the Chicago Tech Scene
Key Facts About Chicago Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 245,800; 5.2% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: McDonald’s, John Deere, Boeing, Morningstar
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, fintech, software, logistics technology
- Funding Landscape: $2.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Arch Venture Partners, MATH Venture Partners, Jump Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
