Head of Solutions Architecture
About The Position
Exa is hiring a player-coach to build and lead its Solutions Architecture team, starting in San Francisco. The team owns the technical side of presales—including discovery, demos, workshops, proofs of concept, and competitive evaluations—to help win new business. The role will hire the first Solutions Architects, establish the team's operating approach, and grow the team with the business. Success is measured by the new revenue the team helps close. The Head of Solutions Architecture is expected to meet the team's technical bar by personally building demos, running competitive evaluations, reviewing POC architectures, and stepping into important deals. The role partners with Sales leadership to own technical wins, drives pipeline generation with Marketing, establishes team metrics and playbooks, and communicates field feedback to Product. This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco, with travel as needed for customer meetings, events, and team time.
Requirements
- Several years of hands-on programming experience, with the ability to build demos, implement POCs, and run rigorous competitive evaluations.
- At least 5 years in presales or technical sales, including experience leading Solutions Architecture, solutions engineering, or sales engineering teams; experience at an AI-native or developer-first company is ideal.
- A track record of hiring strong technical people.
- Clear communication with CTOs, engineers, and executives, and a strong working partnership with Sales leadership.
- Comfort with ambiguity and building processes from scratch in a fast-growing company.
- Willingness to travel as needed for customer meetings, events, and team time.
Nice To Haves
- Experience building a Solutions Architecture or Solutions Engineering team from the ground up at an API, developer-tools, AI, or modern database company.
- Experience building with LLMs, RAG, or agents, with the ability to discuss retrieval and search quality credibly.
- Experience owning or co-owning a revenue number as a technical leader.
- Strong interest in organizing the world's knowledge and making it accessible to machines.
Responsibilities
- Build the Solutions Architecture team in San Francisco by hiring the first Solutions Architects and maintaining a high bar as the team grows.
- Own technical wins in partnership with Sales leadership and coach the team on discovery, demos, proofs of concept, and competitive evaluations.
- Set, track weekly, and coach the team to achieve metrics including revenue closed with the team, pipeline generated, technical win rate, POC conversion, and time to technical win.
- Participate hands-on in strategic evaluations, review architectures, and help the team win competitive bake-offs.
- Drive pipeline generation with Marketing through webinars, technical content, demo apps, events, and meetups.
- Build the Solutions Architecture playbook, including discovery guides, demo environments, reference architectures, evaluation playbooks, and the SA-to-FDE handoff.
- Share field feedback with Product and rank product gaps according to the pipeline and revenue that depend on them.
Benefits
- Premium medical, dental, and vision healthcare benefits.
- Fertility benefits.
- Monthly wellness stipend.
- International candidate sponsorship, including STEM OPT, OPT, H1B, O1, and E3.
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
