Are you a creative, customer-centric, consultative Software Solution Architect and people manager? Do you want an opportunity to have a real impact on a growing B2B product and professional services team? Do you have system integrator or software consulting experience and want an opportunity to make a transition to the product side? Do you want to work in an environment that fosters and looks to align your passions with overall team goals? Do you want to work in an entrepreneurial environment that is flexible and focused on results? If so, we might have the perfect opportunity for you!

Crelate, a fast-growing Kirkland-based startup with over 1,400 business customers, is searching for a Solution Architect Manager to join our growing Professional Services team. As a Crelate Solution Architect your drive, technical excellence and consultative creativity will make the difference in the success of customers. You will partner with our sales and professional service teams to define transformative and creative solutions to the challenges our talent-centric customers face. Your passion and creative will be the reason that we are able to sell Crelate’s services and software into an ever-expanding range of talent-focused businesses. In addition to pre-sales technical consultation, you will scope and engage in the delivery and implementation of our software and custom development services. You will be a crucial part of the professional services team with a large say in how we engineer solutions, what tradeoffs we should make, and what the future looks like for our customer onboarding infrastructure and process.

Crelate’s mission is to help more people, connect with better opportunities, more often. To do this, we are building the fastest, easiest, and most flexible recruiting and talent engagement software on the market, and we need your help!

Reporting directly to our Manager of Professional Services, as a Manager, you will work as part of a team of problem solvers, helping to solve complex business issues from strategy to execution: 

• Guide and mentor team members regarding architecture and best practices:
• Guide your team through sprint planning meetings by using the project mission, scope, and delivery schedule.
• Ensure team is operating at standards that provide predictability (story quality, task assignments, status management, burn down accuracy, etc.).
• Monitor and measure velocity and quality of delivery while Identifying and escalating risks.
• Help define and drive best practices for both our team(s) and the customer resources (in case a scrum master is not effective).
• Build your team by setting a high bar and raising expectations for developers that report to you through architecture and design review, estimation, code reviews, pair programing, education, and other novel practices.
• Manage the team appropriately and efficiently regarding project goals, deliverables and take ownership of their development.
• Manage the team as if it is a small startup in a bigger ecosystem with broad cross-team mindset.
• Provide performance reviews, training guidance, and make hiring/termination decisions.
  

As a Solution Architect, you will leverage your experience and ability to think “out of the box” to find solutions that utilize Crelate’s expanding offerings, along with custom development and integration partner offerings to transform our customer’s businesses.  

• Become an expert in the Crelate talent platform, its capabilities, limitations, nuances, and roadmap.
• Provide input into the product roadmap to achieve Professional Services sales goals.
• Analyze features and leverage product and industry knowledge for market effectiveness and project deliverability; facilitate appropriate feedback and discussions with the product and engineering team.
• Produce progress reports that are client-facing including project health and team health, and overall progress against a roadmap.
• Develop project plans, a strategic vision, and a comprehensive roadmap for Crelate customers.
• Continue to learn outside your comfort zone to keep your skills current.
• Analyze complex ideas or proposals and build a range of meaningful solutions and recommendations.
• Lead the discovery process and collaborate with the Sales team to evaluate customer fit, requirements, current pain points and provide technical proposals.
• Prepare and deliver presentations explaining Crelate’s value to prospects
• Manage technical aspects of RFP responses.
  

Requirements of this position:

• Data-driven. You use data to guide decisions and optimize results.
• Passion for product. You love being part of a product; you find ways to use our product every day, you will support customers use of our product. This inspires you to build great features.
• Customer centricity. You are passionate about customers as people. You’ll build a deep understanding of their needs by speaking with and supporting them. With this, you will create better features that help our customers succeed and our company to achieve its mission.
• Unwavering curiosity. You love to learn and better yourself and the people and things around you. You prefer direct feedback and use it to better yourself and others. Not knowing something and growing motivates you to new heights. You have a growth mindset.
• Organized and an eye for detail. You have excellent organizational skills and pixel-perfect attention to detail.
• Communication. You have excellent presentation, analytical, written and verbal communication skills.
• Resourceful. You care about our company’s resources like they were your own. You know that perfect is the enemy of done.
• You get it done. In the face of uncertainty, and multiple competing priorities you have a bias for action. Through collaboration and creative solutions, you deliver success.
  

Desired experience: 

• 10+ years of software development experience
• 2+ years of management experience
• 5+ years of consulting experience
• 3+ years of solution selling experience
• Strong experience delivering high-availability SaaS services with scalability, reliability, and maintainability in mind.
• Experience in software sales and solution selling, including leveraging custom development, a platform such as Dynamics CRM, SalesForce or major competitive HR/recruiting solution and third-party solutions.
• Expertise in server-side technologies, such as ASP.NET, C#, and SQL Server, and in building .NET/C# web-based applications.
• Expertise in front-end web development technologies like HTML, CSS, TypeScript, etc.
• Proven experience with owning or driving large-scale services, components, or features.
• Software pattern-based design principles and related concepts, such as dependency injection, separation of responsibilities, and clean coding.
• Experience with Azure or competing cloud technology offerings and cloud-centric design patterns.
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science is a plus.
• Strong communication skills. You demonstrate the “polish” to communicate expectations and complex ideas clearly and effectively.
• Experience delivering a variety (Fixed-Fee, T&M) of projects.
• Highly developed customer relations and service skills including the ability to effectively build relationships quickly and work in a collaborative manner with people at all levels.
• Demonstrable ability to envision and design solutions extending Crelate to solve a customer’s requirements.
• Envisioning solutions-related issues and conflicts, collaborating with functional or business teams and developers to deliver solutions that meet business requirements
• Delivering solutions that meets quality standards and being receptive to feedback and direction from others
• Experience managing project delivery with remote and/or off-shore teams.
  

We can offer you: 

• Results driven culture, with reasonably flexible work hours
• Plenty of opportunities to learn, grow your career, and wear lots of hats
• Startup life – flexible, relaxed, yet high stakes work environment
• Awesome coworkers who care about their work and each other
• Competitive benefits including:
• Flexible spending and dependent care accounts
• Medical, Dental and Vision coverage
• 401k with matching
• Long and short-term disability insurance
• A life insurance policy
• A generous paid leave policy, which includes up to 14 days of office holidays (including a company-wide winter break)
• And for team members who excel, stock option grants.

Our culture: 

We are entrepreneurial, passionate, and relentless about customer success. Everyone on the team talks and works directly with customers. Period. We share a collective passion for success, but not at any cost. We are striving to build an amazing product and a great business. This is no trivial task, and we lean on each other as we iterate our way to success. We value transparency, passion, effort, results, and growth.

We very much look forward to hearing from you and reading cover letters that explain how you are a perfect fit for this opportunity.