Solutions Architect, Bay Area

Aerospike, Inc.; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Aerospike is seeking a technically sharp, enterprise-focused Solutions Architect to drive adoption and shape the technical vision of our real-time data platform across North America. In this pre-sales role, you’ll partner with account teams and executives to translate enterprise requirements into scalable blueprints and demonstrate clear business value.

Based in North America, you’ll be the principal technical advisor throughout the sales cycle—from discovery and architectural design to POC

Qualifications

• Executive presence to earn credibility with C-level leaders and architects.
• Deep expertise in NoSQL and relational databases, distributed systems.
• Hands-on Linux and high-concurrency, high-throughput systems.
• Experience with Spark, Hadoop, HBase, Hive, Impala.
• Experience guiding enterprise evaluations, POCs, bake-offs.
• Field-to-product feedback capability.
• Willing to travel up to 30% across North America.

Responsibilities

• Engineer for advantage: lead technical discovery and multi-region designs.
• Master the data plane with databases, distributed systems, high-throughput workloads.
• Sell the architecture and value: link technical choices to ROI and strategy.
• Lead POCs, benchmarks, whiteboard sessions, demos, and reviews.
• Partner with Account Executives to shape deal strategy and navigate stakeholders.
• Diagnose customer problems and turn objections into reasons to buy.
• Capture requirements and feedback for Product and Engineering.
• Represent Aerospike in architecture workshops and events.

Skills

Executive presence

Architecture across data stack

Distributed systems

NoSQL databases

Relational databases

Coding in Java

C/C++

Python

Go

Linux experience

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Docker

Kubernetes

Spark

HBase

HDFS

Cassandra

CockroachDB

Job description

Aerospike is looking for a technically sharp, enterprise-focused Solutions Architect to help drive adoption and shape the technical vision of our blazing-fast, real-time data platform across North America. In this high-impact pre-sales role, you’ll partner closely with account teams and executive stakeholders to lead architecture design, translate complex enterprise requirements into scalable blueprints, and prove clear, compelling value for our prospective customers.

Based in North America, you’ll serve as the principal technical advisor and enterprise architect throughout the sales lifecycle — from high-level discovery and architectural design to proof-of-concept (POC) governance and post-sale deployment strategy. Whether it’s designing fault-tolerant, high-throughput database topologies, addressing complex data modeling challenges, or leading strategic technical discussions, your expertise will be key to helping enterprise clients realize the power of Aerospike.

This is a pre-sales engineering & architecture position.

Responsibilities

• Engineer for advantage: Lead technical discovery and design creative, multi-region architectures that solve demanding data, scale, latency, and resilience requirements.
• Master the data plane: Bring deep expertise in databases, distributed systems, data platforms, and high-throughput workloads—and make complex technology decisions clear to every audience.
• Sell the architecture and the outcome: Connect technical choices to business value, competitive differentiation, ROI, and the customer’s broader data strategy.
• Create conviction through proof: Design and lead rigorous POCs, benchmarks, whiteboarding sessions, demos, and architecture reviews that validate performance, scalability, and business impact.
• Be the technical deal strategist: Partner tightly with Account Executives to shape deal strategy, multi-thread stakeholders, neutralize architectural risk, and advance complex opportunities.
• Unblock with ingenuity: Diagnose hard customer problems, develop practical solutions, and turn technical objections into reasons to buy.
• Turn field insight into leverage: Capture recurring requirements, architectural patterns, and competitive intelligence to influence Product, Engineering, Customer Success, partners, and enablement.
• Close as the trusted technical authority: Lead executive and engineering conversations across North America and help convert technical credibility into regional revenue.

Qualifications

• Command the room: Bring exceptional executive presence, communication, and presentation skills to earn credibility with C-level leaders, principal architects, and developers.
• Architect across the data stack: Demonstrate deep expertise in NoSQL, relational databases, distributed systems, MPP data warehouses, and specialized platforms such as graph, time-series, and AI/ML feature stores.
• Build for real-world scale: Bring hands-on Linux experience and a strong understanding of high-concurrency, high-throughput, mission-critical, and zero-downtime systems.
• Think in distributed systems: Apply practical knowledge of Spark, Hadoop, HBase, HDFS, Hive, Impala, and adjacent data-processing ecosystems to solve complex customer problems.
• Win technical evaluations: Guide enterprise prospects through demanding architecture reviews, competitive bake-offs, POCs, and time-sensitive decisions with structure, urgency, and sound judgment.
• Solve what others cannot: Use exceptional analytical, troubleshooting, and architectural problem-solving skills to isolate root causes and design elegant, executable solutions.
• Operate as a strategic self-starter: Manage complex evaluations, competing stakeholders, and shifting priorities with minimal oversight while keeping the commercial objective in view.
• Translate the field into product leverage: Capture customer requirements and convert them into precise, actionable feedback for Product Management, Engineering, and R&D.
• Advocate where developers learn: Represent Aerospike through architecture workshops, developer meetups, hackathons, technical content, and industry events.
• Code with credibility: Bring software engineering experience and strong coding ability in at least one core language, including Java, C/C++, Python, or Go.

Preferred Qualifications

• Know distributed databases in production: Bring deep operational or architectural expertise with Aerospike or comparable platforms such as CockroachDB, Yugabyte, MongoDB, Cassandra, or Couchbase.
• Architect across the cloud frontier: Hold advanced AWS, Azure, or GCP certifications—or demonstrate equivalent hands-on expertise designing secure, scalable, production-grade cloud environments.
• Build cloud-native systems: Show strong command of microservices, containers, Docker, Kubernetes, and the operational patterns required to run distributed applications at scale.
• Understand performance below the application layer: Diagnose the impact of networking protocols, CPU architecture, NVMe and SSD behavior, memory hierarchy, and other hardware dynamics on system performance.
• Bring pre-sales pattern recognition: Have experience as a Sales Engineer, Solutions Architect, or Principal Consultant in a high-growth technology company, with a track record of influencing complex enterprise decisions.
• Be field-ready: Willing and able to travel up to 30% across North America to support customers, prospects, partners, and technical events.

Salary Range

$220,000 – $280,000

(Actual compensation will be based on experience, location, and other relevant factors.)

Aerospike is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to an environment free from discrimination based on race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran status.

To keep our recruitment pipeline as high-performance as our database, Aerospike uses AI-driven tools to streamline resume reviews, scheduling, and communication. While we love smart tech, we value human connection even more. AI helps us optimize the process, but real people make 100% of the actual hiring decisions.

Aerospike is thereal-time databaseformission-critical use cases and workloads, includingmachine learning, generative, and agentic AI.Aerospike powers millions of transactions per second with millisecond latency, at a fraction of the total cost of ownership compared to other databases.

Global leaders, includingAdobe, Airtel, Barclays, Criteo, DBS Bank, Experian, Grab, HDFC Bank, PayPal, Sony Interactive Entertainment, The Trade Desk, and Wayfair,rely on Aerospike forcustomer 360, fraud detection, real-time bidding,profile stores, recommendation engines,and other use cases.

At Aerospike, we dream big and deliver even bigger. Our mission is to unleash the power of the world’s real-time data with a database built for infinite scale, speed, and sustainability .

If you're ready to shape the future of data, join us.