CDW Hiring for Principal Consultant – Data – Digital Velocity at Vernon Hills, IL  Full Time

CDW Computer Solutions is a CDW company. We share common values as a performance-driven, customer-focused culture. CDW is a leading multi-brand provider of information technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare customers across the globe.

Position Summary:

This position will primarily focus on designing and delivering best-in-class Data solutions for CDW clients. This position plans, directs, and coordinates activities of designated Data projects and associated personnel, subcontractors, and vendors to ensure that client service delivery is effectively managed on all dimensions: budget, timeline, quality, deliverables/outcomes, teaming/collaboration and updates/communication with a high degree of client satisfaction.

The Principal Consultant contributes to the development and evaluation of junior personnel via apprenticeship and QA activities to ensure efficient operation of the function. This position is responsible for meeting team financial objectives through efficient SOW delivery and early escalation of potential change requests. The Principal Consultant teams with other consulting and sales colleagues to develop a “trusted advisor” relationship with clients with the specific objective of achieving further penetration into accounts and attaining meaningful follow-on sales.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

Delivery

• Regularly serves in the lead consultant role on a project team to provide guidance to other team members. Serve as the executive program manager with responsibility for managing client expectations for specific Data projects, while seeking and fostering additional opportunities with clients. As part of this role, is responsible for managing the quality assurance process to deliver quality on-time deliverables.
• Assumes a leadership role in evaluating the clients’ requirements considering leading-edge technology and best in class structure and operating models
• Provides input and quality checks final recommendations for technology solutions to meet business requirements
• Consistently achieves outstanding Client Satisfaction results on all consulting engagements
• Reviews and understands all assigned Statement of Work (SOW) in/out-of-scope activities and deliverables prior to services delivery
• Participates in determining business requirements, technical requirements, and solution architecture for clients
• Understands the business factors and motivators driving technology decisions with clients
• Provides technical team leadership and guidance to a project’s technical team by carrying out the following responsibilities:
  • Assigning analysis, design, and development tasks to team members
  • Coordinating all technical team responsibilities such as installation, configuration, development, deployment, and support of user testing
  • Conducting technical reviews of all materials and deliverables for content, consistency, and accuracy of the solution
• Prepares and completes technical design inspection of other team members
• Communicates status of engagement to the customer, CDW’ Services management, and CDW reps as appropriate during the engagement
• Recognize issues, risks, delays, etc. of the project and communicate immediately to the appropriate customer or CDW team member
• Gathers feedback and input from team members and works with senior project staff to optimize client relationship and improve quality
• Consistently achieves outstanding Client Satisfaction results on all consulting engagements
• Maintains accountability to work estimates and project financials
• Builds client-focused relationships with clients to identify business challenges
• Makes recommendations to solve client problems
• Complies with all-time compliance and time entry guidelines
• Meets billable utilization targets

Practice Development: Supports activities that drive practice growth and profitability.

Pre-Sales

• Directly interacts with clients, sales personnel and CDW Presales Architects to identify, qualify, and validate client requirements for technology solutions. Pursuit activities include meeting with C-Suite personnel, creating and delivering presentations to drive Data solutions
• Creates solution prototypes and POCs which illustrate business value and garner client buy-in
• Provides technical perspective to ensure a realistic estimation of scope, cost and level of effort for proposal generation
• Creates proposals and contractually sound Statements of Work (SOWs), solution work estimates, and total solution pricing for profitable post-sales delivery integration, implementation and delivery. Provides significant and demonstrated services solution sales to meet practice goals
• Develops Cost/Benefit Analysis and rationale for large complex projects or programs with input from others on the account team

IP Development

• Provides technical leadership in the 2-3 core competencies and related offerings of technical specialty
• Conducts research & development work targeted to create frameworks, utilities, or best practices to enhance the efficiency and quality of client delivery efforts
• Cataloguing existing intellectual property (IP), determining strategic areas for IP development (including input into training and education plans), and evangelizing the use of practice IP by delivery teams
• Contributes and develops best practices, strategies, methodologies and documentation/templates. Occasionally presents externally as a thought leader at a regional level

Staff Oversight:

• Directly supervises project staff with responsibility for ensuring engagement success and appropriate use of practice tools, methodology, deliverable preparation, and client presentation
• Leads code or other technical reviews and presents constructive feedback to technical team
• Mentors less senior personnel and serves as escalation point for their technical related project issues
• Steps into team leadership roles and empowers others to increase contribution and level of responsibility
• Training/Certifications – Engages in professional development, including obtaining industry related certifications as directed by management, to maintain continued growth in professional skills and knowledge
• Administrative Overhead – Respond to email, phone calls, complete timecards in a timely manner, expense reports and status reports as required

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent experience
• 7+ years of experience in one or more Data solutions in the CDW portfolio
• Knowledge and skill level in identified competencies meet minimum requirements for role
• Previous direct customer consulting experience or equivalent understanding of role responsibilities

Other Position Requirements

• At least five (5) years’ related work experience with Cloud data analytics platform technologies (Azure, AWS, GCP, Snowflake, Talend, Denodo, Etc.)
• Demonstrated knowledge / understanding of enterprise system integrations, such as:
  • Multi-Cloud integrations (a.k.a. cloud adjacency)
  • Hybrid Cloud/On-prem systems (IBM Cloud Pak For Data, OpenShift)
  • iPaaS solutions (APIM, Mulesoft, etc.)
  • Data Movement (ETL/ELT, Streaming, Batch Loading, Databricks, etc.)
  • Data Virtualization (Logical data warehouse, Logical Data Lakes, Derived Tables); Denodo, Trifacta, Delta Lake, Databricks, etc.
  • Data Prep (Self Service: Azure Data Factory, Talend, Alteryx, PowerBI; Enterprise: Informatica, Tableau Prep, Talend, etc.
  • Data Consumption and Visualizations: PowerBI, Tableau, Cognos, ThoughtSpot, etc.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with a wide variety of client and CDW team members, including management and technical staff
• Demonstrated in-depth knowledge of products, services and industry to identify and evaluate client needs and recommend the best solutions
• Proven ability to set standards, targets, measures for products and services based on knowledge of current market trends
• Demonstrated ability to work with wide variety of client staff including management and technical staff
• Demonstrated ability to provide guidance and leadership to less experienced technical team members, including delegating technical tasks, and resolving issues of poor technical execution without escalation
• Demonstrated ability to architect large projects from pre-sales Discovery to Solution Outline
• Demonstrated presentation and communication skills, including effectively communicating one-on-one, and in
• small and large groups, using a variety of presentation methods to sustain the audiences’ engagement
• Demonstrated time management and organizational skills; ability to handle multiple concurrent projects simultaneously
• Demonstrated ability to establish positive working relationships and conduct complex and important work critical to the organization in a team consulting environment
• Ability to change the thinking of, or gain acceptance from, others in sensitive situations, without damage to the relationship
• Proven ability to maintain a large, influential network of contacts with visible industry presence
• Demonstrated database knowledge in DB2, Oracle, MS SQL, or other enterprise-class RDBMS
• Demonstrated knowledge of operating systems including Windows, i5/OS, z/OS, AIX, Linux, or others

Preferred Qualifications

• Consulting experience, especially in an agency or global systems integrator environment, working with a variety of tools and technologies
• Full software lifecycle development experience, including:
• DevOps, CI/CD Pipelines (Jenkins, Azure DevOps, TFS, etc.)
• Code Review and Repository management (BitBucket, Kraken, etc.)
• Certifications in relevant areas of specialty (Data Virtualization, Data Lakehouse, Cloud Modernization, etc.)
• Agile Methodology and practice experience
• Software(s): Jira, Monday, etc.
• Practices: Scrum master, sprints/task management, release cycles, defect/issue management, etc.
• Understanding of Enterprise Landscapes including digital practices (APIs / RESTful services, Content Delivery, Networking/Infrastructure, etc.)
• Software development languages a plus: C#, Java, Python, etc.

Data Privacy and Security

• All CDW employees are responsible to safeguard the information and information systems that they use or handle in the execution of their duties. Employees are obligated to know and perform their duties in accordance with CDW policies, standards, and procedures related to security and report security violations to the appropriate CDW authority.
• Participate at hire and annually in the Information Security Awareness training as well as other required training identified by the Human Resources department. Other data privacy and data security related regulatory training may be required based on your role

Essential Functions

This position exists to provide technical consulting solutions to customers and as such requires the ability to travel to and from customer sites and interact with customers on an ongoing and regular basis.

The above primary duties, responsibilities, and position requirements are not all inclusive.

CDW is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. As a government contractor, CDW takes affirmative action to employ and advance in employment qualified women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and protected veterans; maintains a drug-free workplace; and participates in E-Verify.

Competencies

Demonstrates competencies defined for the Analyst through Sr. Consultant levels, plus the following:

Business Insight – Knows how businesses work and how organizations make money. Keeps up with current and possible future policies, practices, and trends in the organization, with the competition and in the marketplace. Uses knowledge of business drivers and how strategies and tactics play out in the market to guide actions.

Interpersonal Savvy – Relates comfortably with people across levels, functions, culture and geography. Acts with diplomacy and tact. Builds rapport in an open, friendly, and accepting way. Builds constructive relationships with people both similar and different to self. Picks up on interpersonal and group dynamics.

Organizational Savvy – Is sensitive to how people and organization’s function. Anticipates land mines and plans approach accordingly. Deals comfortably with organizational politics. Knows who has power, respect, and influence. Steers through the organizational maze to get things done.

Strategic Mindset – Anticipates future trends and implications accurately. Readily poses future scenarios. Articulates credible pictures and visions of possibilities that will create value. Creates competitive and breakthrough strategies that show a clear connection between vision and action.

Builds Effective Teams – Forms teams with appropriate and diverse mix of styles, perspectives, and experience. Establishes common objectives and a shared mindset. Creates a feeling of belonging and strong team morale. Shares wins and rewards team efforts. Fosters open dialogue and collaboration among the team.

Drives Vision and Purpose – Talks about future possibilities in a positive way. Creates milestones and symbols to rally support behind the vision. Articulates the vision in a way everyone can relate to. Creates organization-wide energy and optimism for the future. Shows personal commitment to the vision.

CDW is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace.