Solution Architect

Overview

You're the technical expert who helps sales reps close complex deals. You join calls when prospects have deep technical questions, design proof-of-concepts, map out integration architectures, and convince IT/engineering teams that HROne's platform will work in their environment. You split time between pre-sales technical work (60-70%) and post-sales implementation support for your closed deals (30-40%).

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (428 employees, 2,000+ customers)

Size: 428 employees

Growth: Adding sales capacity, which means more need for technical pre-sales support

Market Position: Moving upmarket into larger enterprise deals that require more technical validation and custom integration work

GTM Reality

Your Role in the Sale:

• AEs bring you in when prospects ask technical questions they can't answer
• You typically join around meeting 2-3 (after initial discovery)
• You run technical deep-dives with IT, architect integration plans, build custom POCs
• You're measured on influenced pipeline and win rate of deals you touch

Support Structure:

• You'll support 3-5 AEs simultaneously (each has 15-20 active opps, you touch the top 30-40% that need technical validation)
• Product/engineering team for escalations on roadmap questions
• Implementation team for handoff after deals close

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Darwinbox, Keka, SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle HCM Cloud

How They Differentiate: Azure infrastructure (security story), AI features, API-first architecture for integrations, comprehensive module coverage without enterprise bloat

Technical Objections You'll Handle:

• "Can it integrate with our ERP/finance system?"
• "How do we migrate 10 years of employee data?"
• "What about SSO with our Active Directory?"
• "Can your mobile app work offline for our field employees?"
• "How is PII data encrypted and where is it stored?"

Win Themes: Modern cloud architecture, pre-built integrations, Azure security certifications, faster implementation than legacy systems

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Technical Demos (30%) | Discovery/Scoping (25%) | POC Support (20%) | Documentation (15%) | Internal (10%)

Key Activities

• Technical Discovery: You join sales calls to understand the prospect's current tech stack, integration requirements, data migration complexity, and security requirements. You're documenting their HRIS, payroll systems, SSO setup, API needs, mobile requirements. You ask detailed questions about employee data structure, third-party integrations, compliance needs.
• Custom Demos: You build tailored demos showing specific integrations or use cases. If they have a manufacturing workforce, you demo shift scheduling + biometric attendance integration. If they're a tech company, you show performance review automation + Slack integration. You're not running canned demos - you're customizing based on their environment.
• POC/Trial Management: For larger deals, you set up proof-of-concepts where they test HROne with real data. You configure the instance, help them migrate sample employee data, troubleshoot integration issues, train their IT team. You're on Slack/email daily answering questions during the 2-4 week trial period.
• Integration Architecture: You diagram how HROne will connect to their existing systems (ERP, finance, SSO, benefits platforms). You write technical specification documents, review API documentation with their engineers, plan data migration sequences. You present architecture proposals to their CTO/IT leaders.
• Security Questionnaires: You complete vendor security assessments, provide Azure compliance certifications, explain data encryption, detail access controls. Enterprise deals often have 50+ question security reviews.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Juggling multiple POCs simultaneously: You'll have 3-4 active proof-of-concepts running at once, each with daily questions and issues. Prospects expect fast responses during their evaluation period. You're context-switching between different technical environments constantly.
• Dealing with bad prospect data: Prospects say they want to migrate data, then their employee records are a mess (inconsistent formats, missing fields, no clear system of record). You can't build a POC without clean data, which delays deals.
• Integration promises vs reality: Sales reps sometimes promise integrations that don't exist or are harder than expected. You inherit these commitments and have to either deliver or manage the difficult conversation that it's not possible/timeline is longer.
• Technical dead ends: You spend 2 weeks building a POC, prospect's IT team decides your architecture doesn't fit their compliance requirements, deal dies. Your time investment doesn't always convert to revenue.
• Post-sales handoff tension: You sell a complex implementation, hand it to the delivery team, they struggle with something you promised was easy. You get pulled back in to troubleshoot, which takes time from new deals.

What Success Looks Like

• 60-70% win rate on deals where you run a full POC
• Supporting 20-25 technical evaluations per quarter (mix of demos, POCs, architecture reviews)
• Clean handoffs to implementation team with documented technical requirements
• Building reusable POC templates and integration documentation that speed up future deals

Who You're Selling To

Primary Stakeholders:

• CTO / VP Engineering (technical decision maker, cares about architecture, security, maintainability)
• IT Director / Infrastructure Lead (evaluates integrations, SSO, data migration feasibility)
• CISO / Security Lead (for larger enterprises, reviews compliance, data protection, access controls)
• Sometimes: HR Tech Lead (power user who evaluates workflow functionality)

What They Care About:

• Engineering Leaders: Clean API design, webhook reliability, data model flexibility, deployment architecture, uptime SLAs
• IT Teams: How many integrations they have to build/maintain, SSO compatibility, mobile device management, admin burden
• Security: Data residency, encryption standards, compliance certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001), access controls, audit logging

Requirements

• 3-6 years software engineering experience (backend, cloud infrastructure, or full-stack)
• Deep understanding of REST APIs, authentication (OAuth, SAML, SSO), database design
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure strongly preferred given HROne's stack, AWS/GCP acceptable)
• Comfortable presenting technical architecture to senior engineering/IT leaders
• Ability to debug integration issues, read API documentation, write technical specs
• Prior experience with enterprise software sales or pre-sales solutions engineering helpful but not required
• Willingness to support deals through to implementation (not purely pre-sales)