Solutions Architect

Solution Architects are the trusted advisors to GitLab prospects and clients, showing how the GitLab solutions address clients business requirements. Solution Architects are responsible for actively driving and managing the technology evaluation and validation stages of the sales process. Solution Architects are the product advocates for GitLab’s Enterprise Edition, serving as a trusted advisor to the client, focusing on the the technical solution while also understanding the business challenges the customer is trying to overcome.

The Solution Architect for Customer Success Initiatives provides the opportunity to help drive value and change in the world of software development for one of the fastest growing platforms. By applying your solution selling and architecture experience from planning to monitoring, you will support and enable successful adoption of the GitLab platform. You will be working directly with our top enterprise customers. You will be working collaboratively with our sales, engineering, product management and marketing organizations. This role provides technical guidance and support through the entire sales cycle. You will have the opportunity to help shape and execute a strategy to build mindshare and broad use of the GitLab platform within enterprise customers becoming the trusted advisor. The ideal candidate must be self-motivated with a proven track record in software/technology sales or consulting. The ability to connect technology with measurable business value is critical to a solutions architect. You should also have a demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, products, and technical challenges.

To learn more, see the Solutions Architect handbook

Responsibilities

Primarily engaged in a technical consultancy role, providing technical assistance and guidance specific to enterprise level implementations, during the pre-sales process by identifying customers technical and business requirements in order to design a custom GitLab solution.
In partnership with the sales team, formulate and execute a sales strategy to exceed revenue objectives through the adoption of GitLab.
Educate customers of all sizes on the value proposition of GitLab, and participate in all levels of discussions throughout the organization to ensure our solution is setup for successful deployment
Work onsite with strategic, enterprise class customers, delivering solutions architecture consulting, technical guidance, knowledge transfer and establish “trusted advisor status”
Capture and share best-practice knowledge amongst the GitLab community
Author or otherwise contribute to GitLab customer-facing publications such as whitepapers, blogs, GitLab Handbook
Build deep relationships with senior technical individuals within customers to enable them to be GitLab advocates
Serve as the customer advocate to other GitLab teams including Product Development, Sales, and Marketing
Present GitLab platform strategy, concepts, and roadmap to technical leaders with the customer’s organization

Requirements

Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort speaking with executives, IT Management, and developers.
Strong written communication skills
High level of comfort communicating effectively across internal and external organizations
Ideal candidates will preferably have 7 plus years IT industry or IT technical sales related to experience with a proven track record of solution sales expertise
Significant experience with executive presence and a proven ability to lead and facilitate executive meetings and workshops.
Deep knowledge of software development lifecycle and development pipeline (planning to monitoring)
Understanding of continuous integration, continuous deployment, chatOps, and cloud native
Experience with waterfall, Agile (SCRUM, Kanban, etc) and able to discuss the value of different software development processes
Experience with container systems preferred
- Kubernetes / Docker
- Installation / configuration
- Container registries
Experience with any of the following tools / software packages preferred:
- Ruby on Rails Applications
- Git,BitBucket/Stash, GitHub, Perforce, SVN
- Jira, Jenkins
Understand mono-repo and distributed-repo approaches
Ability to travel up to 30%
B.Sc. in Computer Science or equivalent experience
Successful completion of a background check.

Preferred Skills/Qualifications

Above average knowledge of Unix and Unix based Operating Systems
- Installation and operation of Linux operating systems and hardware investigation / manipulation commands
- BASH / Shell scripting including systemd and init.d startup scripts
- Package management (RPM, etc. to add/remove/list packages)
- Understanding of system log files / logging infrastructure

Specialties

Read more about what a specialty is at GitLab.

Federal

Additional Responsibilities

Participating in conferences and trade shows and interacting with government customers in attendance
Contribute to the creation of case studies, white papers, and media articles for government customers and/or partner
Consistently provide world-class customer service during pre-sales, implementation, and post-sales activities
Manage all technical aspects of the sales cycle: creating high quality professional presentations, custom demos, proof of concepts, deliver technical deep dive sessions & workshops, differentiate GitLab from competition, answering RFI, RFPs, etc.
TS/SCI Security Clearance

Additional Requirements

Washington DC area preferred but not required
Knowledge and at least 4 years of experience with Federal customers
Ability to travel up to 50%
Understand mono-repo and distributed-repo approaches

Manager, Solutions Architects

GitLab is a hyper growth company searching for people who are intelligent, aggressive and agile with strong skills in technology, sales, business, communication and leadership. Desire to lead through change is a must.

The Manager, Solutions Architects role is a management position on the front lines. This is a player/coach role where the individual is expected to be experienced in and have advanced insight to the GitLab platform. The individual will contribute to territory and account strategy as well as driving the execution directly and indirectly. The individual will need to be very comfortable giving and receiving positive and constructive feedback, as well as adapting to environmental change and retrospecting on successes and failures. The Manager, Solutions Architects will work together with the other managers within the customer success organization to help execute on strategies and vision with the Director.

Responsibilities

Oversee the day-to-day operations of your team of Solutions Architects
Work as an individual contributor for key accounts as needed or requested
Participate in technical sales calls, and contribute to creating sales and evaluation strategy at the account level
Provide technical leadership and platform strategy to the team as well as the larger sales organization
All aspects of people management, including hiring, development, training, regular 1:1s and annual reviews
Hire, train and retain top talent
Provide feedback and direction, both positive and constructive, to personnel in a timely manner
Build a strong team and provide satisfaction among your team and customers
Influence both internal and external C-level executives through presentations and whiteboard sessions
Work collaboratively with other groups, including Sales, Professional Services, Support, Engineering, Technical Account - Managers and Product Management, to ensure effective operation of your team, achieve the technical win, and ensure ongoing customer satisfaction
Formulate best practices for presentations, demos, and POCs as well as overall sales strategy
Act as a trusted advisor to higher level management on strategic opportunity reviews, emerging competitive threats, product direction, and establishing sales objectives and strategies
Work with the Customer Success Director to help establish and manage Solutions Architect goals and responsibilities
Assist in development of thought leadership, event-specific and customer-facing presentations
Share hands-on technical preparation and presentation work for key accounts
Take the lead in hiring and onboarding new SA’s
Ensure the SA team exceeds corporate expectations in core knowledge, communication and execution
Define and maintain a high bar for team member expectations and enable the team to achieve it
Challenge the team and yourself to continually learn and grow as trusted advisors to clients
Evangelize new product features & provide customer feedback to GitLab product management and engineering groups
Ensuring the Solutions Architects engage the Technical Account Manager during the pre-sales so that the post-sales technical process handoff for seamless Drive customer adoption and success by providing oversight, adoption - recommendations, opportunities for greater service
Ensure timely resolution of POC issues by coordinating support responses
Maintain a deep understanding of each customer’s business as well as their technical environments – become a trusted advisor to our customers
Support the Sales team with opportunity qualification, demonstrations, Proof of Concept presentations (POC), RFP responses, and business justification in a pre-sales capacity
Mentor and develop the existing Solutions Architect team
Be able to present complex technical solutions to clients
Present credibly to engineering decision makers and technology executives
Develop and execute solution selling strategies and identify opportunities for process improvements
Remain knowledgeable and up-to-date on GitLab releases

Requirements

All requirements for the Solutions Architect role apply to the Manager, Solutions Architects position, as the management position will need to understand and participate with the day-to-day aspects of the Solutions Architect role in addition to managing the team. Additional requirements include:

Experienced in and with advanced insight to the GitLab platform
Experienced in giving and received positive and constructive feedback
Able to adapt to environmental change and restrospecting on success and failures
Previous leadership experience is a plus
Experienced in collaborating with other managers and executing strategies

Hiring Process

Candidates can expect the hiring process to follow the order below. Please keep in mind that candidates can be declined from the position at any stage of the process. To learn more about someone who may be conducting the interview, find her/his job title on our team page.

Selected candidates will be invited to schedule a screening call with our Global Recruiters
Next, candidates will be invited to schedule a first interview with Director of Customer Success
For an individual contributor role, candidates will be invited to schedule an interview with a Customer Success peer and may be asked to participate in a demo of a live install of GitLab
For a manager role, candidates will be invited to schedule interviews with our Regional Sales Directors for North America
Candidates will be invited to schedule a third interview with our CRO
Finally, candidates may be asked to interview with the CEO
Successful candidates will subsequently be made an offer directly from Director of Customer Success

Additional details about our process can be found on our hiring page.

Compensation

You will typically get 80% as base, and 20% based on meeting the global sales goal of incremental ACV. Also see the Sales Compensation Plan.

Apply

Please note that if we are actively hiring for a position, you will see it listed on our jobs page, where all of our current openings are advertised. To apply, please click on the name of the role you are interested in, which will take you to our applicant tracking system (ATS), Lever.

Avoid the confidence gap; you do not have to match all the listed requirements exactly to apply. Our hiring process is described in more detail in our hiring handbook.

About GitLab

GitLab Inc. is a company based on the GitLab open-source project. GitLab is a community project to which over 1,000 people worldwide have contributed. We are an active participant in this community, trying to serve its needs and lead by example. We have one vision: everyone can contribute to all digital content, and our mission is to change all creative work from read-only to read-write so that everyone can contribute.

We value results, transparency, sharing, freedom, efficiency, frugality, collaboration, directness, kindness, diversity, boring solutions, and quirkiness. If these values match your personality, work ethic, and personal goals, we encourage you to visit our primer to learn more. Open source is our culture, our way of life, our story, and what makes us truly unique.

Top 10 reasons to work for GitLab:

Work with helpful, kind, motivated, and talented people.
Work remote so you have no commute and are free to travel and move.
Have flexible work hours so you are there for other people and free to plan the day how you like.
Everyone works remote, but you don't feel remote. We don't have a head office, so you're not in a satellite office.
Work on open source software so you can interact with a large community and can show your work.
Work on a product you use every day: we drink our own wine.
Work on a product used by lots of people that care about what you do.
As a company we contribute more than we take, most of our work is released as the open source GitLab CE.
Focused on results, not on long hours, so that you can have a life and don't burn out.
Open internal processes: know what you're getting in to and be assured we're thoughtful and effective.

See our culture page for more!

Work remotely from anywhere in the world. Curious to see what that looks like? Check out our remote manifesto.