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Salary: EUR 194,000 - 292,000 / annual
Nutanix is seeking a Director of Solutions Engineering to lead the SAP HANA Performance Team. This role is central to validating and optimizing SAP HANA performance on Nutanix AHV and AOS infrastructure, with responsibility for qualifying software against SAP benchmark targets and certifying third-party OEM servers for SAP's certified hardware directory.
You will manage a globally distributed team of remote employees and subcontractors focused on benchmarking SAP HANA and related SAP software components. Key responsibilities include:
• Leading performance validation efforts comparing bare-metal SAP HANA deployments against virtualized configurations on Nutanix AHV, identifying and resolving performance gaps.
• Deploying, configuring, and troubleshooting SAP HANA across various hardware specifications and software versions, establishing best practices for the Nutanix platform.
• Collaborating with Nutanix core engineering teams to diagnose and resolve performance issues, driving root-cause analysis and code improvements.
• Managing infrastructure in the SAP Linux lab in Walldorf, Germany, and building strategic relationships with SAP stakeholders at their headquarters.
• Analyzing results from SAP validation and certification suites, comparing against KPI thresholds, and diagnosing failures across the full stack.
• Provisioning and tuning SAP HANA parameters, Linux OS (SLES/RHEL for SAP), vCPU/NUMA topology, kernel scheduling, storage, and network configurations.
• Automating hardware and software deployments using infrastructure-as-code and APIs; exploring AI-driven process automation.
• Producing technical artifacts including SAP Notes, best practice guides, test plans, and KPI result packages for SAP submissions.
• Developing sizing guidelines, configuration recommendations, and reference architectures for SAP HANA on Nutanix platforms.
• Supporting large customer deals involving SAP HANA and collaborating with hardware OEMs on validation efforts.
The Solutions & Performance Engineering team is globally distributed, comprising architects, performance engineers, and industry specialists focused on validating and optimizing customer success across strategic workloads.
REQUIREMENTS:
• 5+ years in SAP HANA infrastructure or general database performance engineering, with at least 2 years focused on virtualized HANA.
• Deep Linux OS experience.
• Experience with Nutanix HCI performance monitoring tools.
• Hands-on experience running SAP HANA test harness validation and certification suites, interpreting KPI results (especially storage latency and throughput tests), and understanding test failure reasons.
• Working knowledge of SAP HANA, the SAP HANA hardware directory, and ideally SAP's certification requirements for HCI and virtualized deployments.
• Strong Linux performance skills on SLES for SAP or RHEL for SAP, including hugepages, C-states, power governors, NUMA topology, SNC2, I/O schedulers, and standard observability tools (perf, sar, iostat, blktrace, numastat, ftrace).
• Practical experience with virtualization performance: CPU pinning, NUMA alignment, vCPU-to-pCPU ratios, memory reservation, and virtual storage/network path behavior.
• Nutanix AHV/AOS experience strongly preferred; ESXi or KVM experience considered if relevant expertise demonstrated.
• Comfortable with distributed storage concepts: replication factor, data locality, write path, oplog behavior, and latency percentiles.
• Scripting for automation and analysis (Python, Bash); familiarity with Ansible or Terraform for repeatable lab builds.
• Excellent communication skills in both English and German, with ability to engage meaningfully with customers.
GREAT TO HAVE:
• Direct involvement in prior SAP HANA hardware, HCI, or cloud certification submissions.
• Experience with SAP HANA System Replication, scale-out landscapes, and HA/DR validation under fault injection.
• Familiarity with SAP application-layer benchmarking (SD benchmark, BW/4HANA, S/4HANA workload profiles).
• Nutanix certification (NCP/NCM) or SAP HANA Technology certification.
