Principal Solutions Architect

What You'll Do

Strategic Account and Client Advisory

• Lead technical and business conversations for strategic or complex client opportunities, including discovery, qualification, needs assessment, executive briefings, workshops, and solution validation.
• Build trusted-advisor relationships with key client stakeholders; understand their evolving priorities, risks, operating constraints, and decision process.
• Translate business objectives and compliance obligations into practical solution options, including assumptions, tradeoffs, sequencing, dependencies, and client decisions required to proceed.
• Support executive-level account strategy, customer escalation management, and coordinated internal response when solution, scope, delivery, or commercial issues place an opportunity or relationship at risk.
• Maintain continuity from pre-sales into delivery by clarifying intended outcomes, handoffs, open decisions, and success criteria with client and internal stakeholders.

Solution Architecture, Scoping, and Commercial Execution

• Serve as solution architect for complex client requirements, defining client-specific approaches across compliance, cloud, security, technology, and operating-model considerations.
• Drive pre-sales technical activities from opportunity identification through closing, including discovery calls, needs assessments, solution scoping, proof of concepts, pilots, and technical validation.
• Partner with Business Development, delivery, finance, and other internal teams to develop proposals, statements of work, pricing models, estimates, assumptions, and value narratives.
• Develop and present architecture diagrams, implementation roadmaps, solution demonstrations, presentations, RFI/RFP responses, and other technical validation artifacts that make complex decisions understandable.
• Support client negotiations by explaining solution rationale, scope boundaries, commercial assumptions, delivery approach, and the value of Coalfire’s recommendations.
• Identify and articulate opportunities for cross-sell and expansion across Coalfire service lines when they materially improve client outcomes.

Scope, Delivery, and Risk Governance

• Establish and maintain clarity on scope, responsibilities, technical boundaries, prerequisites, dependencies, assumptions, and change-control requirements for complex pursuits and engagements.
• Partner with delivery teams and client stakeholders to align solution design with operational realities, delivery capacity, implementation sequencing, and support-model expectations.
• Surface risks, issues, and unresolved decisions early; facilitate the right conversations and documentation to enable timely resolution.
• Help define practical responsibility models, governance mechanisms, and operating approaches where multiple Coalfire teams, client teams, platforms, vendors, or business units are involved.
• Protect delivery quality and commercial integrity by distinguishing committed scope from future-state concepts, optional services, and changes requiring formal approval.

Partner and Ecosystem Collaboration

• Support partner relationships that strengthen client solutions, including technology partners, subcontractors, and complementary service providers.
• Coordinate with partner teams when their products, licensing, capabilities, support, or commercial models materially affect a client solution or outcome.
• Incorporate partner capabilities into solution strategy while maintaining clear accountability for Coalfire’s scope, recommendations, and client commitments.

Thought Leadership and Market Development

• Contribute to thought leadership, sales collateral, technical content, workshops, webinars, and client-facing materials that position Coalfire’s expertise and solutions.
• Maintain working knowledge of relevant markets, customer challenges, regulatory frameworks, technology trends, and competitor activity within assigned focus areas.
• Help identify and shape new offerings, solution plays, and go-to-market approaches based on recurring customer needs, delivery experience, and market opportunity.
  
• Contribute to additional projects and responsibilities as needed that support team priorities and organizational goals.
• Travel is expected for client workshops, executive briefings, industry events, and strategic account support; anticipated travel is approximately 25–35%, subject to business needs.

What You'll Bring

Coalfire seeks candidates with demonstrated success supporting complex enterprise pre-sales and solution-development work. Successful candidates combine technical depth with strong commercial judgment, client-facing communication skills, and the ability to align diverse stakeholders around a practical path forward.

Candidates should have experience that enables them to:

• Articulate Coalfire’s value in Global Assurance, compliance, security, cloud, and related solutions.
• Lead or materially support enterprise discovery, solution design, proposals, pricing, and client-facing technical discussions.
• Partner effectively with sales, delivery, product, finance, and external partners.
• Manage ambiguity, competing priorities, and high-visibility client situations without losing sight of scope, delivery feasibility, or customer outcomes.
• Position Compliance and Assurance solutions alongside Coalfire’s broader portfolio in cross-sell motions.

Experience selling, delivering, or managing compliance and audit solutions is vital. Qualified candidates should have at least eight years of relevant experience supporting well-known frameworks, which may include:

• ISO 27001/27002
• PCI DSS
• FedRAMP/FISMA
• CMMC
• GDPR
• SOC
• CCPA

Bachelor’s degree from a four-year college or university, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant work experience.

Bonus Points

Subject-matter expertise in data privacy, U.S. and global regulations, and common compliance frameworks is preferred. Relevant certifications may include:

CISSP

CRISC

CISA/CISM

CGEIT