Solutions Architect, US Remote

present of AI; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Exa is seeking a presales engineer in San Francisco who can code to build demos and end-to-end proofs of concept, and who can run discovery calls and design evaluations for potential customers. You will articulate the technical case to engineers and executives, comparing retrieval and search quality, and will pair hands-on engineering with customer-facing work to help win deals.

The role sits at the intersection of AI models and retrieval, with hands-on work in LLMs, RAG, and evaluation setups,

Qualifications

• Hands-on coding ability to build demos and proofs of concept.
• Experience creating demos and prototypes for technical audiences.
• Knowledge of LLMs, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), and evaluation workflows.
• Ability to explain retrieval and search quality to engineers and executives.

Responsibilities

• Build end-to-end demos and proofs of concept for prospects.
• Run discovery calls and guide customer evaluations.
• Design evaluation plans and compare competing solutions.
• Explain technical benefits and distinguish Exa against rivals in live discussions.

Skills

Hands-on coding

Demo and prototype building

LLM and RAG work

Clear technical communication

Job description

This role is the technical half of a sales team for a search API aimed at AI builders. It asks for someone who can code well enough to build demos and run proofs of concept end to end, and who can also run discovery calls, design evaluations, and argue the technical case against rivals. A strong candidate pairs hands on engineering with a few years of presales work at a developer or AI focused company, and can explain retrieval and search quality to both engineers and executives.

How it fits the AI era

The product itself serves AI models and agents, so the work sits close to how teams build with large language models and retrieval. Much of the routine comparison and benchmarking can be sped up with tooling, but the judgment about where a prospect's use case fits, and the trust built in a live technical conversation, stays with the person. The role rewards those who can show real working prototypes rather than slides.

How it builds AI experience

Working here means daily contact with search and retrieval as used by agents and AI labs, plus hands on building with LLMs, RAG, and evaluation setups. A candidate can prepare by building small retrieval demos, running quality and latency comparisons, and getting comfortable discussing how search feeds model outputs. That practice maps directly to the demos and proofs of concept this job centers on.

Worth showing

• Hands on coding
• Demo and prototype building
• LLM and RAG work
• Clear technical communication

This is our own read, written from the employer's posting and the company's Spotlight. The employer's posting is the source of truth for the role.

About Exa

Exa is an applied AI lab that builds a search engine and API for AI models and agents, per the company.