Senior Manager, Technical Architecture

Zendesk; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 166,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Zendesk in Austin, TX, seeks a Senior Technical Architect to lead and grow the Americas Architecture team. You will guide enterprise SaaS designs, coordinate with Sales, Professional Services, and customers, and drive scalable, AI-enabled delivery in a fast-moving environment.

You will influence senior stakeholders, define scope, improve delivery health, and shape platform standards while partnering with Product to close capability gaps and accelerate value realization.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in Technical Architecture or related enterprise SaaS role.
• 3+ years leading architecture or consulting teams with distributed staff.
• Experience designing complex customer-facing SaaS implementations across multiple engagements.
• Understanding of product-led delivery and repeatable solution patterns.
• Strong analytical, project management, and executive communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Americas Technical Architecture team, hiring and coaching.
• Define scope with Sales and customers, assess effort, risks, and delivery value.
• Improve portfolio delivery health via planning, forecasting, and risk management.
• Drive cross-functional alignment and stakeholder consensus.
• Partner with Product to provide roadmap feedback and capability gaps.
• Advance AI adoption and scalable patterns across teams.
• Raise architecture standards with consistent discovery, design, and governance.

Skills

People leadership

Technical architecture

SaaS delivery

Stakeholder influence

AI-enabled delivery

Delivery portfolio management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field

Tools

Zendesk APIs

App framework

Cloud/SaaS architecture

Job description

Job Description

Location : Austin, Texas (Hybrid)

Department / Team: Professional Services - Technical Services

Reports to : Senior Director, Technical Services

Why This Role / Why Now

As customers adopt more sophisticated AI-enabled experiences and integrations, strong technical architecture is critical to successful transformation. Within Zendesk’s Professional Services organization, Technical Architects help customers design, configure, integrate, and extend the Zendesk platform to solve complex business needs, accelerate time to value, and achieve measurable business outcomes.

Mission

Lead and grow a team of Technical Architects who help enterprise customers design, implement, integrate, and adopt scalable solutions on the Zendesk platform. Set standards for discovery, project scoping, solution design, AI-enabled delivery, and value realization—helping customers accelerate time to value, increase adoption, achieve measurable business outcomes, and build long-term platform success that contributes to renewal readiness and retention.

What you’ll be doing

• Lead and develop the Americas Technical Architecture team: Hire, coach, develop, and retain a distributed team of Technical Architects while setting clear expectations for performance, growth, and technical leadership.
• Lead project scoping and advisory engagements: Partner with Sales, Professional Services, and customers to define scope, clarify assumptions, assess effort and complexity, identify risks and dependencies, recommend solution options, and align delivery with customer outcomes and business value.
• Own portfolio delivery health: Improve planning, forecasting, resourcing, risk management, scope, dependencies, and delivery predictability across concurrent customer engagements.
• Build cross-functional alignment: Influence senior stakeholders, resolve trade-offs, and drive consensus across internal teams and customer organizations.
• Partner with Product : Deepen Technical Architect expertise, provide roadmap feedback, participate in beta initiatives, identify capability gaps, and expand the team’s skills, influence, and career opportunities.
• Advance AI adoption and enablement: Champion practical, responsible AI adoption across the Technical Architecture team and wider organization by sharing use cases, building capability, developing reusable patterns, and scaling proven practices through cross-functional partnerships.
• Raise architecture standards and drive continuous improvement: Establish consistent approaches to discovery, solution scoping, design, documentation, governance, and quality while using customer and operational insights to improve delivery practices.

What you bring to the role

• People leadership: You hire, coach, develop, and build high-performing technical teams.
• Technical architecture leadership: You guide complex, multi-system designs that balance scalability, simplicity, security, adoption, and implementation practicality.
• SaaS and customer outcomes: You connect architecture decisions to time to value, adoption, delivery predictability, customer satisfaction, and long-term platform success.
• Portfolio and delivery discipline : You manage scope, dependencies, risks, timelines, delivery health, and competing priorities.
• Executive and cross-functional influence: You communicate clearly, navigate conflict, and build alignment across technical, business, internal, and customer audiences.
• AI fluency and responsible judgment: You identify high-value AI applications, assess risks and trade-offs, and promote responsible use of AI and customer data.
• Continuous improvement: You anticipate needs, adapt to changing priorities, and turn customer and operational insights into better ways of working.
• Change leadership: You evolve team structures, roles, processes, and workflows to improve collaboration, efficiency, scalability, and business impact.

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience in Technical Architecture, Solutions Architecture, Consulting, Technical Account Management, or a related enterprise SaaS role.
• 3+ years of people management experience leading architecture or consulting teams within a B2B SaaS, cloud software, systems integration, or enterprise technology services environment, with experience managing distributed teams.
• Experience designing and delivering complex customer-facing SaaS implementations, integrations, or platform solutions across concurrent customer engagements or programs.
• Understanding of product-led delivery, platform adoption, implementation governance, and repeatable solution patterns.
• Strong analytical, project management, interpersonal, and communication skills with senior stakeholder influence.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong knowledge of Zendesk products, APIs, app framework, integrations, and Zendesk AI capabilities.
• Experience establishing architecture governance, design reviews, reusable patterns, technical standards, or competency frameworks, as well as coaching teams on AI-enabled workflows and responsible AI practices.
• Practical understanding of generative AI, AI agents, retrieval and knowledge patterns, and AI evaluation, with the ability to integrate AI capabilities into enterprise workflows.
• Advanced degree or relevant certifications in architecture, cloud, AI strategy, project management, or delivery.

The US annualized OTE (On Target Earnings) range for this position is $166,000.00-$250,000.00 with a pay mix of 87/13 (base/commission). This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law.