Senior Solutions Architect

Zendesk • Washington, DC

1d • $206,000 - $308,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

We are an innovative and fast-moving business focused on helping companies build better relationships with their customers. We take pride in the impact our work has on organizations, while also caring deeply about the experience of our employees and the culture we build together.
Zendesk helps companies improve customer engagement through powerful, scalable, and easy-to-use software solutions. Our products enable organizations to move faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver better customer experiences across every touchpoint.
We are looking for a Senior Solutions Architect to help expand our Services business in North America. This role will lead strategic scoping conversations with customers and prospects, covering technical architecture, solution design, implementation strategy, AI-enabled workflows, automation opportunities, and competitive differentiation throughout the sales cycle.

Requirements

• Experience selling, scoping, or supporting Mid-Market and Enterprise software solutions.
• Strong background in pre-sales, solutions architecture, consulting, implementation, technical strategy, or customer-facing technical roles.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, persuasion, presentation, and writing skills.
• Proven ability to communicate technical value to C-level executives, directors, business stakeholders, and technical teams.
• Experience scoping, managing, and executing customer pilots, Proofs of Concept, technical workshops, and solution demos.
• Strong problem-solving skills, including the ability to translate business needs into practical technical solutions.
• Advanced solution scoping capabilities, including the ability to use existing product capabilities while influencing future product development.
• Previous consulting experience implementing enterprise-class software solutions.
• In-depth knowledge of customer service software, ITSM, CRM, data warehousing, business intelligence, integrations, APIs, and customer experience platforms.
• 2+ years of experience managing, mentoring, or leading a presales, solutions consulting, or similar technical team.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required; graduate degree is a plus.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with multiple priorities and stakeholders.
• Willingness to travel when required for strategic customer engagements.
• Strong ownership mindset, executive presence, curiosity, and passion for helping customers succeed.
• Practical experience using AI tools in a professional environment and should be comfortable identifying where AI can improve customer workflows, operational efficiency, support experiences, and business outcomes.
• Hands-on use of AI tools for research, documentation, solution design, customer analysis, workflow automation, and productivity.
• Understanding of generative AI concepts, including prompt engineering, context management, retrieval-augmented workflows, AI assistants, and agent-based systems.
• Ability to evaluate business use cases and determine where AI is appropriate, valuable, safe, and technically feasible.
• Experience creating, configuring, or using AI-powered agents to perform structured tasks, automate workflows, assist users, or support business processes.
• Knowledge of how to design and use reusable AI skills, playbooks, or task-specific capabilities that improve consistency and execution quality.
• Familiarity with integrating AI tools into enterprise environments, including APIs, knowledge bases, support platforms, workflow tools, and internal systems.
• Ability to explain AI opportunities and limitations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Awareness of AI governance considerations, including data privacy, security, hallucination risk, access control, human-in-the-loop review, and responsible AI usage.
• Intermediate level comfort using a terminal or command-line interface for day-to-day technical tasks.
• Intermediate to Advanced level understanding of how AI skills or reusable capabilities can be designed, documented, and applied to repeatable business tasks.
• Intermediate level understanding of how AI agents work and how they can be applied to real business scenarios.
• Intermediate to Advanced level ability to participate in technical conversations involving integrations, APIs, automation, and enterprise architecture.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Zendesk or similar customer experience, CRM, support, or ITSM platforms.
• Experience in AMER markets and ability to work across diverse cultures, languages, and business practices.
• Experience with AI-enabled customer service, chatbots, virtual agents, workflow automation, or knowledge management solutions.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI platforms, automation tools, APIs, and cloud-based architectures.
• Experience building technical demos, prototypes, or proof-of-concept environments.
• Ability to influence product direction based on customer needs and market trends.
• Strong business acumen and ability to connect technical recommendations to revenue, efficiency, customer satisfaction, and operational impact.
• Bilingual or multilingual communication skills are a plus, especially English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
• Advanced level ability to write or modify basic scripts.
• Experience using tools such as curl, package managers, Git, API clients, and cloud or platform CLIs.
• Comfort debugging integration issues, authentication problems, API responses, and configuration errors.
• Advanced level experience using AI skills to standardize repetitive work such as discovery summaries, proposal drafts, solution scoping, implementation checklists, and customer follow-ups.
• Advanced level ability to define clear instructions, inputs, outputs, constraints, and quality expectations for AI-powered skills.
• Advanced level understanding of when a skill should be reused, improved, or replaced by a more advanced automation or agent.
• Advanced level ability to create structured prompts, templates, and workflows that improve consistency across teams.
• Advanced level understanding of how skills can support presales, services, customer support, knowledge management, and internal operations.
• Advanced level hands-on experience configuring, testing, or deploying AI agents.
• Familiarity with agent orchestration, tool use, API actions, memory/context handling, knowledge retrieval, and human approval flows.
• Ability to evaluate agent performance and recommend improvements.
• Understanding REST APIs, authentication methods, webhooks, data flows, and integration patterns.
• Ability to scope integrations between customer experience platforms, CRM systems, ITSM tools, BI platforms, data warehouses, and AI tools.
• Ability to translate business requirements into integration requirements and technical assumptions.
• Ability to identify risks related to data quality, permissions, latency, scalability, security, and implementation complexity.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with developers, implementation consultants, and enterprise architects.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery and solution scoping conversations with Corporate, Mid-Market, and Enterprise customers.
• Partner with Sales to define technical strategies that support AMER pipeline growth and services revenue targets.
• Own the technical relationship with prospects and customers during the sales cycle, from initial discovery through proposal and closure.
• Design scalable customer experience, support, ITSM, automation, data, and AI-enabled solutions aligned with customer requirements.
• Identify opportunities to incorporate AI, automation, agents, workflows, and knowledge-based systems into customer solutions.
• Support Solutions Architects in key customer meetings, technical workshops, executive presentations, and strategic opportunities.
• Drive best practices within the AMER Solutions Architecture team and apply global standards to regional execution.
• Create a regular business rhythm with AMER Sales counterparts to ensure service propositions are included in relevant sales proposals.
• Help define and execute the regional partnership strategy, including technology partners, implementation partners, and AI ecosystem partners.
• Ensure all scopes are aligned with company methodology, delivery standards, technical feasibility, and customer success outcomes.
• Lead, mentor, attract, and retain high-performing presales and solutions talent.
• Create services sales strategies aligned with the Sales organization.
• Provide weekly reporting on AMER pipeline, deal progression, technical risks, services opportunities, and action plans to achieve targets.
• Translate business requirements into technical solutions, architecture recommendations, implementation plans, and measurable business outcomes.
• Support customer pilots, Proofs of Concept, demos, solution prototypes, and AI-enabled workflow demonstrations.
• Stay current on emerging AI technologies, agentic workflows, automation tools, API-driven architectures, and customer experience innovation.

Benefits

• Bonus, benefits, or related incentives

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree