Senior Solutions Architect – Manufacturing & Industrial Automation

About the role

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.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Requirements

• 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.

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.
• Hands-on understanding 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.

Skills

• 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.

Benefits

• Salary range $138,500.00 USD- $221,600.00 USD
• 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 position

Pay

$138,500.00 USD - $221,600.00 USD

Schedule

Remote — United States, Canada

Travel: approximately 30% to customer sites.

About Cerence

Cerence is a global leader in conversational AI and voice technologies, expanding innovations beyond automotive into robotics and physical AI. 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. As Cerence looks to the future and continues an ambitious growth agenda, we need someone to join the team and help build the future of voice and AI in cars.

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.