Senior Solutions Architect – Manufacturing & Industrial Automation

Cerence; United States; Remote; USD 139,000 - 222,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote/hybrid work

Job summary

Cerence is seeking a Senior Solutions Architect for Manufacturing & Industrial Automation. You will engage senior decision-makers, own the technical core of opportunities, and drive PoCs and proofs‑of‑value to commitments across plant-floor systems.

You’ll collaborate with sales, product, and services, shaping how voice AI runs on hardware and edge platforms while advancing integration with MES/MOM, EAM/CMMS, and OT/industrial standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a technical field.
• 8+ years in solutions or sales engineering, technical pre‑sales, or related roles with customer-facing ownership.
• Hands-on understanding of OT/automation stack and hybrid edge/cloud architectures.
• Experience leading PoCs and proof‑of‑value engagements from discovery to onboarding.
• Excellent customer-facing communication across shop-floor to executives.

Responsibilities

• Engage senior technical decision-makers across manufacturing and automation ecosystems.
• Own the technical core of opportunities and design how voice AI fits on customer hardware.
• Clear roadblocks between interest and a signed deal for PoCs and evaluations.
• Collaborate with sales, product, and professional services to shape solutions.
• Feed customer requirements back into product roadmap and field delivery.

Skills

Customer-facing communication

Lead technical evaluations

Collaboration with sales/product/prof.

Authorized to work in country of hire

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related engineering

Tools

OPC UA

MQTT

Hybrid edge/cloud architectures

Job description

A Moving Experience.

Senior Solutions Architect – Manufacturing & Industrial Automation

Your Impact

• Engage senior technical decision-makers across the manufacturing and industrial automation ecosystem — rugged device, wearable, and headset makers; connected-worker, MES/MOM, and EAM/CMMS platforms; voice-picking and WMS vendors; and SCADA/HMI and PLM software leaders — from startups to established global names.
• Own the technical core of every opportunity: understand how our hybrid agentic Voice AI and embedded voice run on the customer’s hardware, edge silicon, or platform, design how it fits, and work through the hard questions that keep a deal moving.
• Clear the technical roadblocks between interest and a signed deal, turning eval kits, PoCs, and proofs-of-value into commitments.
• Work hand in hand with sales, product, and professional services, translating what you learn in the field into how we sell, deliver, and build.
• Shape the product itself, feeding real customer hardware, plant-floor acoustics, and integration requirements back into what we build next.

Why Join the Team

• You get in early on a market about to scale, and help define how voice AI for the industrial frontline is won.
• This is a new business, so you help shape the solution itself. How it works in the real world, on real customer hardware and plant-floor systems, is still being defined, in large part by you.
• You bring the autonomy of a start-up and the credibility of an established company to every conversation, with the capital, customer relationships, technology, and brand behind you.
• Decisions come fast, obstacles get cleared, and you hold real authority over your part of the business.
• Your impact is rewarded directly, with real financial upside tied to the deals you support.

What You Bring

• Genuinely curious about how things work — you enjoy going deep with engineering teams and translating the hard parts into something a customer can act on.
• A natural collaborator who works closely with sales, product, and professional services, with the ambition to take on more ownership and get closer to the customer.
• A builder’s mindset — comfortable with ambiguity and a fast-moving, new-business environment where the solution is still being shaped, in large part by you.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software, Industrial/Automation/Controls Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years in solutions or sales engineering, technical pre‑sales, systems integration, or hands‑on development, including customer‑facing technical ownership of evaluations and PoCs.
• Hands‑on understanding of the manufacturing and industrial automation stack — the OT/controls layer (PLC, SCADA/HMI, historians, OPC UA, MQTT), the operations layer (MES/MOM, ERP, PLM, EAM/CMMS, WMS), and the reference models and standards that govern it (ISA-95/ISA-88, Industry 4.0, Unified Namespace) — and of hybrid edge/cloud architectures, on‑device and embedded systems, and offline‑first deployment.
• Working knowledge of the underlying frontline hardware and where voice runs on it — rugged handhelds and wearables, industrial headsets and AR/assisted‑reality glasses, and edge/on‑device compute and AI‑ready silicon (SoCs/NPUs).
• Proven ability to lead technical evaluations, PoCs, and proof‑of‑value engagements from discovery through onboarding and post‑sales hand‑off.
• Excellent customer‑facing communication, able to engage both shop‑floor engineers and senior or executive stakeholders.
• Authorized to work in the country of hire without current or future employer sponsorship.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in a relevant engineering or computer science discipline.
• Hands‑on experience with one or more leading MES/MOM or EAM platforms (e.g., Siemens Opcenter, Rockwell FactoryTalk/Plex, AVEVA, PTC, IBM Maximo, Tulip) and industrial protocols (OPC UA, MQTT, Unified Namespace).
• Experience with voice, conversational, or speech AI; on‑device/edge SLMs; and audio front‑end or microphone‑array integration.
• Familiarity with OT/industrial cybersecurity and functional‑safety standards (IEC 62443, zero‑trust/defense‑in‑depth).
• Experience delivering solutions in regulated or high‑noise environments (e.g., pharma/GxP, process industries, warehousing and logistics).
• Multilingual capability for global customer engagements.
• Familiarity with Microsoft and NVIDIA partner ecosystem and motions.

Location & Travel

• Location: Remote — United States, Canada.
• Travel: approximately 30% to customer sites.

What we offer

• We offer a generous compensation and benefits package (in addition to the base salary), including:

• Salary range $138,500.00 USD- $221,600.00USD Itis not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the range. The actual salary will be determined based on experience and other job‑related factors.

• Annual bonus opportunity

• Insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability)

• Paid time off

• Paid holidays

• Company contribution to the RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan)

• Equity awards for certain positions and levels

• Remote and/or hybrid work available depending on the positionAll compensation and benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of the underlying plans or programs, as applicable, and may be amended, terminated, or replaced from time to time.

About Cerence

Cerence is a global leader in conversational AI and voice technologies, expanding innovations beyond automotive into robotics and physical AI.

Cerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC and www.cerence.com) is the global industry leader in creating unique, moving experiences for the automotive world. Spun out from Nuance in October 2019, Cerence is a new, independent company that has quickly gained traction as a leader in the automotive voice assistant space, working with all of the world’s leading automakers – from Ford and Fiat Chrysler to Daimler, Audi and BMW to Geely and SAIC – to transform how a car feels, responds and learns. Its track record is built on more than 20 years of industry experience and leadership and more than 500 million cars on the road today across more than 70 languages.

AsCerencelooks to the future and continues an ambitious growth agenda,we need someonetojointheteam and help build the future of voice and AI in cars. This is an exciting opportunity to joinCerence’spassionate, dedicated, global team and be a part of meaningful innovation in a rapidly growing industry.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Cerence is firmly committed to Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and to compliance with all federal, state and local laws that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sex, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, citizenship status, sexual orientation, protected military or veteran status, genetic information and other protected classifications. Cerence Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

All prospective and current Employees need to remain vigilant when it comes to executing security policies in the workplace. This includes:

• Following workplace security protocols and training programs to familiarize with the ways to maintain a safe workplace.

• Following security procedures to report any suspicious activity.

• Having respect for corporate security procedures to allow those procedures to be effective.

• Adhering to company’s compliance and regulations.

• Encouraging to follow a zero tolerance for workplace violence.

• Basic knowledge of information security and data privacy requirements (e.g., how to protect data & how to be handling this data).

• Demonstrative knowledge of information security through internal training programs.