Principal Solution Architect, AI and Emerging Tech

Fluent Commerce; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work terms

Parental leave

Birthday leave

Team events

Learning & development allowance

Inclusive culture

Job summary

Fluent Commerce is seeking a Principal Solution Architect for AI and Emerging Technologies in the United States. You will define Fluent's AI strategy, demonstrate platform capabilities to prospects and customers, and lead strategic GTM and commercial discussions with Sales.

You will own senior relationships with customers and partners, guiding topology and proof-points from a strategic standpoint. You will work with the Applied AI Product Manager to build use cases and with the Distinguished AI

Qualifications

• Customer Advocate: Put customer needs first in every interaction.
• Reasoned Credibility: Command a room and be grounded, not hype-driven.
• Bias for Action: Lean in and drive outcomes aggressively.
• Storyteller: Make AI narratives credible and memorable without sales pitch.
• Product Differentiation Focus: Highlight Fluent's true, defensible differentiators.
• Technical, Not Necessarily a Coder: Architect-focused, not code-writing.

Responsibilities

• Define and represent Fluent's AI strategy to the market, articulating differentiators.
• Deliver credible live demonstrations of Fluent's platform and AI capabilities.
• Lead GTM and commercial conversations for AI opportunities with Sales support.
• Own senior customer and partner relationships, coordinating with the Applied AI team.

Job description

Principal Solution Architect, AI and Emerging Tech

Application Deadline: 31 December 2026

Department: Solution Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: United States

Reporting To: Alan Jackson

Description

Fluent is building an intelligent OMS: data-driven, adaptive, context-aware, with predictive decisions and embedded intelligence throughout the platform.

As Principal Solution Architect for AI and Emerging Technologies, you are the credible voice customers and partners hear when they ask what Fluent's AI strategy really is, and the person who proves it.

This role reimagines what a Solution Architect is inside Fluent. You are not a consultant, and this is not a services engagement. You are a strong customer advocate who commands a voice of reasoned credibility: the person who talks, and the room settles in to listen, because what you say is grounded in what's actually been built, not what's aspirational. Your attitude is to lean in. You are committed to making success happen, not to describing how it could happen.

You work alongside two other roles inside this function: the Principal Product Manager for Applied AI, who builds and proves use cases hands-on inside the platform, and the Distinguished AI Architect, who owns the technical backbone underneath it. Your role is the external voice and strategic guide, owning the senior relationship and the narrative, helping customers and partners combine Fluent's flexibility and extensibility to their specific need, and ensuring Fluent's true product differentiators, not generic AI narrative, are what the market hears.

Key Responsibilities:

• AI Strategy & Industry Leadership: Define and represent Fluent's AI strategy to the market, articulating true product differentiators over generic AI narrative, and leading the industry conversation on agentic orchestration and order management.
• Solution Demonstration: Personally deliver credible, live demonstrations of Fluent's platform and its AI capabilities to prospects, customers, and at industry moments, proving what's possible rather than describing it.
• GTM & Commercial Leadership: Lead strategic conversations with prospects, own value positioning and commercial framing for AI-related opportunities, and partner with Sales on active opportunities from discovery through to close.
• Customer & Partner Relationship Ownership: Own the senior relationship and roadmap conversation with customers and partners (SI, ISV, Hyper-scalers), bringing in the Principal Product Manager for Applied AI to build and prove specific use cases.
• Technical Champion Building: Identify and develop technical champions inside prospect and customer organisations who can advocate for Fluent internally.
• Strategy Guide & Operational Handbook: Own and maintain the strategy guide, operational handbook, and reusable demo and proof-point content that helps customers and partners combine Fluent's flexibility and extensibility to their specific need.
• Executive & ELT Narrative: Shape Fluent's AI narrative constructively with the broader Executive Leadership Team, keeping what's said externally aligned with what's actually true internally.
• Ecosystem Enablement: Help SI and ISV partners evolve their own services and tooling for an agentic world, including enabling them to demo Fluent's AI capability themselves.
• Thought Leadership & External Representation: Represent Fluent externally at conferences, webinars, and in analyst and press conversations, as the visible, credible face of Fluent's AI direction.
• Community Engagement: Build and nurture the community of builders and partners extending Fluent's platform, feeding signal back into the Applied AI and AI Architect teams.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise:

• Customer Advocate: First and foremost, you advocate for the customer, not for a deal or a deck.
• Reasoned Credibility: You command a room. When you speak, people listen, because what you say is grounded, not hyped.
• Bias for Action: You lean in. Committed to making success happen, not just describing how it could happen.
• Storyteller: You make Fluent's AI story credible and memorable, without resorting to a typical sales pitch.
• Product Differentiation Focus: Skilled at cutting through generic AI narrative to articulate Fluent's true, defensible differentiators.
• Technical, Not Necessarily a Coder: You're credible in an architecture conversation and speak the customer's language, but you're not expected to write production code.
• Commercially Strong: You understand value positioning and commercial terms, and you can hold a customer-facing commercial conversation without a salesperson in the room.
• Strategic & Visionary: You set direction, not just deliver it. You can articulate where AI takes the platform and the industry next, and get customers and partners genuinely inspired to move with you.

Experience & Domain Fit

• Pre-Sales Track Record: Experience as a Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, or similar pre-sales technical role. This seat isn't branded as pre-sales, but that muscle, holding a technical room and advancing a deal, is exactly what it needs.
• Global Enterprise Experience: Track record leading strategic technical conversations with global enterprise customers and prospects.
• Domain Experience: Experience working in the retail, commerce, and/or supply chain domains.
• Regulatory Familiarity: Familiarity with the global regulatory landscape (data sovereignty requirements, the EU AI Act, and similar) and how it impacts enterprise AI deployments.
• Commerce & Emerging Protocols: Sound understanding of and experience with commerce and the emerging protocols surrounding it (e.g. agentic commerce protocols such as UCP, AP2 and WebMCP).
• Commercial Experience: Experience pricing AI capability, packaging it into commercial offers, and communicating that value clearly to customers.
• Executive Presence: Comfortable shaping narrative in front of a customer's or partner's executive leadership team, and Fluent's own.
• AI Fluency: At least a high level of familiarity with the architecture and operation of large language models and/or ML in general, enough to hold a credible technical conversation.
• Active in the Field: Demonstrable evidence of staying current through an active interest in emerging research and industry trends.

Job Benefits:

• Flexibility:
  • Work on your terms, when and where it suits you, while embodying our company culture.
• Flexible and supportive leave policies:
  • Including generous paid parental leave and paid leave for your birthday so you can celebrate you.
• Culture is key:
  • We have a great team and enjoy regular social events to foster a collaborative, supportive and fun work environment.
• Advance your career:
  • We invest in your future by providing an allowance to help accelerate your learning and professional development.
• Bring your whole self to work:
  • At Fluent, we strive to create and nurture a culture where every employee can bring their whole self to work, feel inspired, and empowered to do your life’s work (or be your best self).