Senior Manager, Technical Architecture

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

Job summary

Zendesk seeks a Senior Technical Architect to lead the Americas architecture team, shape scalable SaaS solutions, and drive AI-enabled delivery for enterprise customers.

You will partner with Sales, Professional Services, and product teams to design scope, assess complexity, and guide multi-system implementations that deliver measurable business value. This role blends leadership with hands-on architectural excellence.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in Technical/Solutions Architecture or related enterprise SaaS role.
• 3+ years of people management leading distributed architecture teams.
• Experience designing and delivering complex customer-facing SaaS implementations.
• Strong communication and senior stakeholder influence.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Americas Technical Architecture team with coaching and growth.
• Define scope, assess effort, and align delivery with customer outcomes.
• Own portfolio delivery health: plan, forecast, resource, and mitigate risks.
• Drive cross-functional alignment across internal teams and customer orgs.
• Partner with Product to provide roadmap feedback and AI enablement.
• Advance AI adoption with reusable patterns and governance practices.
• Raise architecture standards and improve discovery, design, and governance.

Skills

People leadership

Architecture leadership

SaaS outcomes

Delivery discipline

Executive influence

AI fluency

Change management

Strategic communication

Analytical skills

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business

Tools

Zendesk APIs

Zendesk app framework

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.