Head of Solutions Architecture

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

Job summary

Exa, an applied AI lab building a search engine and API for AI models and agents, seeks a Senior Customer & Solutions leader in San Francisco. This player-coach role will build and lead a presales solutions architecture team from scratch while staying hands-on in the largest deals.

You will run discovery, demos, proofs of concept and competitive evaluations that help sales close, and you will partner closely with sales leadership to shape processes as the company scales.

Qualifications

• This is a player coach role: build and lead a presales solutions architecture team from scratch while staying hands-on in the biggest deals.
• Run discovery, demos, proofs of concept and competitive evaluations to help sales close.
• Comfort with building process amid fast growth and partnering with sales leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead a presales solutions architecture team from scratch while staying hands-on in major deals.
• Manage discovery, demos, proofs of concept and competitive bake-offs to win opportunities.
• Partner with sales leadership to align engineering delivery with sales strategy.

Job description

Customer & Solutions · San Francisco, California · FullTime · Senior level

This is a player coach job: build and lead a presales solutions architecture team from scratch while staying hands on in the biggest deals. A strong candidate programs at a high level, has led solutions engineering teams before, hires well, and can run discovery, demos, proofs of concept and competitive evaluations that help sales close. Comfort with building process amid fast growth and partnering closely with sales leadership matters.

How it fits the AI era

The product is a search engine built for AI models and agents, so the technical conversations center on retrieval quality, RAG and agent use cases. AI speeds up demo building and evaluation work, but judging whether a proof of concept truly fits a customer's architecture and winning a competitive bake off still depend on human technical judgment. The role also feeds field learning back to product, which keeps a human loop between customers and engineering.

How it builds AI experience

The job offers direct exposure to building with LLMs, RAG and agents on top of a search API, and to talking credibly about retrieval and search quality with engineers and executives. Someone aiming for this should build sample agents or RAG apps on a search API, run their own retrieval comparisons, and practice explaining tradeoffs plainly. Leading a small technical team or owning a revenue number would round out the presales side.

Worth showing

• Hands on coding
• Presales team leadership
• Hiring technical people
• LLM and RAG building
• Competitive evaluation wins

This is our own read, written from the employer's posting and the company's Spotlight. The employer's posting is the source of truth for the role.

About Exa

Exa is an applied AI lab that builds a search engine and API for AI models and agents, per the company.