Solutions Architect, SF

Exa; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

premium healthcare benefits (medical, 

fertility benefits

a monthly wellness stipend to all of 

Job summary

Exa, the San Francisco-based AI search engine company, seeks a Solutions Architect to lead the technical side of presales, from discovery to demos and POCs. You will work closely with Account Executives, run workshops, and bring Forward Deployed Engineers when deeper expertise is needed.

You will be responsible for winning technical evaluations, addressing security and architecture questions, and building reusable presales assets that demonstrate Exa's capabilities to prospects.

Qualifications

• Several years of hands-on programming experience with the ability to build compelling demos and end-to-end POCs.
• 2+ years of hands-on presales or technical sales experience in AI-native or developer-first environments.
• Strong communication skills for CTOs, engineers, and PMs; ability to simplify complex tech.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical side of opportunities alongside Account Executives from first call to technical win.
• Run discovery to understand use cases, architecture, data needs, and success criteria.
• Build and deliver tailored demos, samples, and prototypes.
• Design and run workshops and POCs with clear success criteria and timelines.
• Win technical evaluations by benchmarking quality, latency, and cost.

Skills

Hands-on programming

Presales experience

Clear communication

Travel willingness

Job description

About Exa

We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z, with existing investors Benchmark, Lightspeed, and YC doubling down, the round brings Exa's valuation to $2.2 billion.

Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents, Fortune 500s, and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasn't been disrupted since the 90s. We're a largely SF-based team of ~100 from Harvard, MIT, Meta, Google Research, ex-founders, and dropouts alike.

We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. We're high agency, low-ego, and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right.

About the Role

Solutions Architects are the technical tip of the spear in Exa's presales motion. From the first call to the technical win, you're the person who shows prospects what Exa can do and proves it works for their use case. You partner with Account Executives on new accounts and new opportunities, and you're measured on technical wins, POC conversion, and pipeline velocity.

You'll run discovery with engineers and executives, build demos that land, design and run workshops and proofs of concept, and make the technical case for Exa against alternatives. When a deal needs specialist depth, you pull in our Forward Deployed Engineers. When a deal closes, you hand the customer off to them with everything they need to get to production fast. This is not a demo-only role. You are an engineer who sells.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the technical side of new opportunities alongside Account Executives, from first call through technical win

• Run discovery to understand a prospect's use case, architecture, data needs, and success criteria, and qualify where Exa fits

• Build and deliver tailored demos, sample apps, and prototypes that show what Exa can do on the prospect's own problem

• Design and run workshops and POCs with clear success criteria, timelines, and evaluation plans, then drive them to a decision

• Win technical evaluations by benchmarking Exa on quality, latency, and cost, and making a clear case against alternatives

• Handle technical objections and answer security, compliance, and architecture questions

• Bring in Forward Deployed Engineers as specialists when a deal needs deeper expertise, and run a clean handoff to them after close

• Feed market signal back to Product: what prospects ask for, where we lose, and what would help us win

• Build reusable presales assets such as demo environments, reference architectures, and evaluation playbooks

Requirements

• Several years of hands-on programming experience. You can build compelling demos, implement POCs end to end, and design and run rigorous evals in head-to-head competitive scenarios

• 2+ years of hands-on presales or technical sales experience, ideally at an AI-native or developer-first company. You've owned the technical side of deals, run discovery and demos with technical buyers, and helped carry opportunities to close

• Strong communication skills: you can adapt your pitch to CTOs, engineers, and PMs alike, and explain complex technology simply

• Track record of high performance in demanding environments, whether that's a top CS program, a competitive sport, a startup, or something else entirely

• High tolerance for context-switching, ambiguity, and sustained intensity

• Willingness to travel as needed for customer meetings and workshops

You might excel if you...

• Have worked as a solutions architect, solutions engineer, or sales engineer at a developer-tools, API, or AI company

• Have built with LLMs, RAG, or agents and can talk credibly about retrieval and search quality

• Have helped close revenue or driven commercial outcomes at a previous company

• Thrive in early-stage environments where your job description changes monthly

• Love the moment a prospect sees a demo and gets it

• Care deeply about the problem of organizing the world's knowledge and making it accessible to machines

This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco. We're happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g., STEM OPT, OPT, H1B, O1, E3).

• premium healthcare benefits (medical, dental, vision)
• fertility benefits
• a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.

Exa is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related conditions, criminal histories consistent with applicable law, or any other basis protected by applicable law.