Jobs · Washington

Solutions Architect

PortX · Seattle, WA · 2 days ago
HybridContract

About the Role

PortX Solutions Architects are consultants first, engineers second. You are the customer-facing owner of solution shape: you run discovery, scope the engagement, design against the PortX platform and ORCA reference architecture, and govern delivery so the implementation ships on the platform — not around it. The measure of a great SA here is not the code you write; it's how little bespoke code the engagement needs, how fast delivery squads become self-sufficient, and how much of what you design becomes a reusable, sellable asset.

Responsibilities

  • Consulting & customer leadership
    • Lead discovery, scoping, solution design, and estimation for integration engagements, ensuring solutions are scalable, supportable, and commercially sound — estimates tie to standard deliverables and templated effort, not open-ended custom builds.
    • Engage directly with customers across pre-sales and delivery: build trusted-advisor relationships, elicit the business problem behind the stated requirement, and translate it into the smallest platform-native solution that solves it.
    • Facilitate customer workshops, architecture reviews, whiteboarding sessions, and executive presentations; communicate solution designs and trade-offs clearly to both technical and business audiences.
    • Own the written solution artifacts — Solutions Design Documents, ADRs, estimates, and definition-of-done criteria — to a quality standard fit for architecture review and customer sign-off.
  • Architecture & governance
    • Act as SME for the PortX platform (Integration Manager, ORCA, connector library) and end-to-end integration lifecycle, providing architectural guidance from intake through go-live and handover.
    • Design template-first: default to fixed-price-engineering (FPE) patterns, reusable connectors, and configuration over custom code. Bespoke code is an explicit, justified exception — documented as an ADR and taken through architecture review — never a default.
    • Enforce ORCA contract fidelity and platform conventions across implementations; contribute findings and standards back through the Architecture Review Council.
    • Gate solution quality at intake: validate that scope, requirements, and estimates are sound before delivery commits, and flag misfit deals early.
  • Enablement & Leverage
    • Mentor and coach PortX and customer development teams; the goal is squads that design, build, and support integrations with progressively less SA involvement — SA time concentrates at solution shape and review, not implementation.
    • Convert engagement work into product: every project should leave behind a reusable asset — a connector, template, mapping, pattern, or documented playbook — that reduces the cost of the next similar engagement.
    • Use AI tooling as a first-class delivery instrument: code generation against templates, spec-driven scaffolding, automated conformance scoring, and documentation generation. Fluency here is expected, not optional.
    • Drive continuous improvement across integration patterns, delivery methodology, estimation models, tooling, and documentation.
  • Hands-on credibility

    Lead by example through hands-on problem solving where it unblocks the team — spikes, reference implementations, and rescue work — while resisting becoming the delivery bottleneck.

Requirements

  • Strong enterprise integration consulting and implementation experience: APIs, event-driven architecture, integration platforms/iPaaS; you have led engagements, not just built inside them.
  • Demonstrated customer-facing skills: discovery, workshop facilitation, estimation, executive communication, and managing scope with commercial awareness.
  • Fluency reading and reviewing Java/Spring Boot code well enough to govern quality, review PRs, and prototype — this role designs and governs more than it codes.
  • Hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering (code generation, agentic tooling, spec-to-code workflows) and a point of view on where it accelerates delivery safely.
  • Working knowledge of containerization, Kubernetes/GitOps-style deployment, and AWS.
  • Experience with OpenAPI-first design, consuming and specifying web services, Git, and standard build tooling.

Qualifications

  • Strongly Preferred
    • Banking, credit union, or payments domain experience (core banking systems, digital banking, ACH/ISO 20022).
    • Experience productizing services delivery: templates, SDKs, connector libraries, fixed-price packaging.
    • Experience standing up or operating architecture governance (review boards, ADR practice, conformance standards).
  • Required Soft Skills
    • Strong problem-solving skills
    • Excellent spoken and written English communication skills
    • Highly organized, with strong prioritization and time management skills
    • Flexible and responsive, with the ability to adapt to changing priorities and tight deadlines
    • Confident, customer-facing presence with the ability to build trust and engagement

What Success Looks Like (First 90 Days)

  • Engagements you architect ship on templated/FPE patterns with zero unreviewed bespoke code.
  • Delivery squads enable you to handle standard integrations end-to-end without SA escalation.
  • Your engagements produce reusable connectors and templates adopted by subsequent projects.
  • Estimation accuracy improves because your designs map to known, repeatable units of work.

Benefits

  • Competitive compensation: attractive equity opportunities at a venture-backed startup
  • High Impact Role: Have a direct and immediate impact on revenue & scaling the business
  • Insurance (medical, dental, vision)
  • 401(k)
  • Unlimited PTO
  • Be a part of a collaborative and highly motivated team culture where your voice is heard and you're not just a number in a big company

US Citizenship required - No Visa Sponsorship available

PortX Principles

  • Do Everything with Purpose
  • Challenge the Ordinary
  • Check your Ego at the Door

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