Head of Solutions Architecture

Wwshemi; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Premium healthcare (medical, dental, &

Job summary

Exa, a San Francisco-based AI search engine company, is seeking a Solutions Architect Leader to build and lead Exa's Solutions Architecture team in San Francisco. You will own the technical win in collaboration with Sales, coach the team on discovery, demos, POCs and competitive evaluations, and drive revenue growth.

This player-coach role requires hands-on abilities to build demos, run architectures, and participate directly in strategic deals, with travel as needed and a commitment to hiring

Qualifications

• Hands-on programming experience at the level of the SAs you'll hire, able to build demos, run POCs, and perform competitive evals.
• 5+ years in presales or technical sales, including leading SA/solutions engineering teams at AI-native or developer-first companies.
• Track record of hiring strong technical people.
• Clear communication with CTOs, engineers and executives, and a strong partnership with Sales leadership.
• Comfort with ambiguity and building process from scratch in a fast-growing company.
• Willingness to travel for customer meetings, events and team time.

Responsibilities

• Build the SA team in San Francisco: hire the first Solutions Architects and maintain high standards as the team grows.
• Own the technical win in partnership with Sales leadership, coaching the team on discovery, demos, POCs and competitive evaluations.
• Drive the SA team's metrics: revenue closed, pipeline generated, technical win rate, POC conversion and time to win; set targets and coach to hit them.
• Get hands-on in key deals: join strategic evaluations and review architectures to win bake-offs.
• Drive pipeline generation with Marketing through webinars, demo apps, content, events and meetups.
• Build the SA playbook: discovery guides, demo environments, reference architectures, evaluation playbooks and handoffs to FDE.
• Feed product back to rank gaps by pipeline and revenue.

Skills

Hands-on programming

Presales experience

Lead SA teams

Executive communication

Travel willingness

Job description

About Exa

We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion.

Exa is building the search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s, and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders, and dropouts alike.

We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right.

About the Role

You'll build and lead Exa's Solutions Architecture team, starting in San Francisco. Solutions Architects own the technical side of presales: discovery, demos, workshops, POCs and competitive evaluations that win new business. You'll hire the first SAs, set how the team works, and grow it as the business grows. You're measured on the new revenue your team helps close.

This is a player-coach role. You hold the same technical bar as the people you hire: you can build a demo, run a competitive eval and review a POC architecture yourself, and you step into the most important deals when it matters.

In this role, you will:

• Build the SA team in San Francisco: hire the first Solutions Architects and keep the bar high as the team grows
• Own the technical win in partnership with Sales leadership, and coach the team on discovery, demos, POCs and competitive evaluations
• Drive the SA team's key metrics: revenue closed with the team, pipeline generated, technical win rate, POC conversion and time to technical win. Set the targets, track them weekly and coach the team to hit them
• Get hands-on in key deals: join strategic evaluations, review architectures and help the team win competitive bake-offs
• Drive pipeline generation with Marketing: webinars, technical content, demo apps, events and meetups that create new pipeline
• Build the SA playbook: discovery guides, demo environments, reference architectures, evaluation playbooks and the SA to FDE handoff
• Feed the field back to Product, ranking product gaps by the pipeline and revenue that depend on them

Requirements

• Several years of hands-on programming experience, at the same level as the SAs you'll hire: you can build demos, implement POCs and run rigorous competitive evals yourself
• 5+ years in presales or technical sales, including experience leading SA, solutions engineering or sales engineering teams, ideally at an AI-native or developer-first company
• 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 process from scratch in a fast-growing company
• Willingness to travel as needed for customer meetings, events and team time

You might excel if you...

• Have built an SA or SE team from the ground up at an API, developer-tools, AI or modern database company
• Have built with LLMs, RAG or agents and can talk credibly about retrieval and search quality
• Have owned or co-owned a revenue number as a technical leader
• Care deeply about the problem of organizing the world's knowledge and making it accessible to machines

This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco. We're happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g., STEM OPT, OPT, H1B, O1, E3). In addition to premium healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision), we also offer fertility benefits and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.

Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.