Manager, Solutions Architect

Role and Purpose 

This position will report to the Head of Solutions Architecting.  It will be home office based and may require up to 10% travel (primarily for InterPayments events).  

You convert our customers’ goals into reality.  Enterprise companies seek a solution to their processing fee pain points.  Introducing ways to reduce fees impacts many parts of a customer’s organization, from sales and finance to IT and legal.  You solve their problems by working with many stakeholders to create both technical and non-technical programs.  You put yourselves into the customer’s shoes to determine what best addresses their needs.  You simultaneously advise on best practices while ensuring the solution fits the customer’s unique constraints.  When there are roadblocks, you find creative ways around them.  You empower with information and plans that make their jobs easier.   

You want to make an impact.  You are motivated by the large mission we have. You enjoy the fact that helping large, enterprise customers requires wearing multiple hats.  You provide input into improving our solutions architecting processes and our products.  This is a high impact role requiring close collaboration across Sales, Product, Engineering, and Customer Success.  

You value building trust and long-lasting relationships.  You enjoy being a consultant to customers.  You are deeply motivated by creating mutual success.  You find satisfaction turning a customer's uncertainty or anxiety into relief.  You relish the challenge of not knowing an answer but working to find one.  You are a trustworthy and dependable advocate.  People know they can rely upon you. 

You’ll make our company better.  You’ll contribute to creating a world-class sales and product team.  You’ll have key input into how we engage with our customers.  You’ll uncover insights about how we should interact with customers and how our products can improve.  You’ll be part of a collaborative team that’s most interested in building great new things that solve merchant and partner problems. 

How you’ll make an impact 

• Leading technical sales cycles: Enterprise B2B SaaS sales is a team effort.  You’ll lead the technology consulting side of the sales process on all types of customers, including merchants, payment facilitators, ISVs, etc.  This requires being extremely curious to deeply understand customer problems and motivations, And then translating those insights into technical requirements.   
• Building trust with customers.  You’ll deliver gold standard responsiveness and consultative meetings that are honest and results oriented. 
• Driving product innovation: As you bridge the gap between customer needs and our product/technology side, you’ll understand our products extremely well.  You will understand how customers perceive and use them.  You’ll use those unique insights to help drive product innovation and roadmap. 

• Improving operational processes: You’ll help shorten time to revenue by reducing process friction.  You’re the first point of contact for technical issues around implementation-phase customers, filtering between implementations and product/engineering.  You’ll be a key support person for our implementations team when questions arise.   
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with sales, product, and other teams to align solutions architecting efforts with overall business objectives and foster a collaborative environment. 

Folks who thrive in this role typically have… 

• 5+ years solutions architecting, sales engineering, implementation consulting experience at a modern payment gateway or acquiring platform (such as Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Payrix, and FreedomPay).   
• Ability to bridge technical and non-technical customer goals in a practical manner, including outlining recommendations and costs/benefits.   
• Adept client relationship management skills.  You can engage in business-level and technical conversations at multiple levels of a customer’s organization. 
• Strong product sense and energized by the challenge of solving difficult user related problems 
• Clear and decisive written and verbal communication skills 
• Ability to lead complex integration conversations in a highly consultative and proactive manner 
• Familiarity with APIs and ability to explain API concepts 
• Experimental with new strategies and technologies (including AI) to improve impact 
• Proven ability to work cross functionally with internal stakeholders and external vendors 
• Self-starter, independent driver who can execute with minimal supervision, balance multiple activities simultaneously, and achieve deadlines 
• Responsible & accountable. If you say you will do it, you do it 
• Attention to detail and deep curiosity 

Nice to Haves 

• Previous start-up experience 

 Who you are 

You strive to uncover complex problems and find great personal and professional fulfillment in solving them. You can put yourself into the mindset of a customer to uncover problems before an actual customer does. In addition, you are:  

  Team-oriented: You believe shared success and individual advancement go hand-in-hand.  We share your values.  You thrive in an inclusive, collaborative environment and hold yourself and your teammates accountable You step up and step in when your team needs you.   

• Impact-driven: You find deep meaning and satisfaction in making an impact.  You are self-aware about what motivates you and what instills passion.  You take pride in being trusted to deliver results for your team.  You embrace a growth-mindset.  You reframe setbacks as gifted opportunities to improve.  In short, you’re a polite, ethical hustler.   

• Structured decision maker: you believe progress is rooted in a focused effort.  To know how to focus, you work hard to understand the root cause and listen to different points of view.  You prefer investigating to being right.  You first identify the core drivers of a problem and work backwards to simplify the solution.  You constantly think about 2nd and 3rd order effects of decisions.  In general, you are optimistically paranoid about what you don’t know.   

InterPayments’ Values: 

• Customers and mission first.  The customer is at the heart of everything we do and we have an enormous obligation to help them.  We align our company, team, and individual goals with customer outcomes and our mission.  When making decisions and setting priorities, we always keep our customer’s perspective and our mission in mind.   
• Always build trust.  We focus on the long-term. We treat everyone - existing and prospective teammates, customers, partners, vendors, investors - as if we’ll know and work with them forever.  We assume good intent and empathize.  We’re always ethical, respectful, and honest.  We are responsive, reliable, and trustworthy.  We are loyal and committed to one another, our customers, and our mission.  Nothing is transactional.   
• Do the hard(er) thing.  We reject complacency and embody a growth mindset because it’s more fulfilling.  Being resilient, flexible, and adaptable is challenging.  Seeking and delivering honest feedback is hard.  Embracing open-mindedness, intellectual honesty, and respectful disagreement is tough.  Being relentlessly curious, simplifying complexity, and thinking through 2nd/3rd order effects of decisions takes more work.  Being highly responsive and making data-driven decisions requires more effort.  We choose to do them anyway.  We find reward in pushing ourselves and others beyond our comfort zones.