Senior Solutions Engineer

Key Responsibilities

1. Solution Design & Architecture

Engage with enterprise technology partners, software vendors, and end customers to understand their existing systems and translate requirements into a clear solution architecture.

Lead integration planning discussions, mapping data flows, defining API specifications, and aligning on technical interfaces between systems.

Produce solution design documents, architecture diagrams, and data flow maps that both technical and non-technical stakeholders can act on.

Work with clients to design deployment configurations, on-premise, cloud, or hybrid, based on their infrastructure constraints and performance needs.

Define compute specifications (CPU/GPU, memory, storage), network topology, and infrastructure sizing for each engagement.

Produce cloud cost estimates and total cost of ownership (TCO) models across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Own and respond to RFPs and RFIs, including technical, security, and compliance questionnaires.

2. Hands-on POC & MVP Execution

Build working proofs of concept to validate architecture decisions before full engineering investment, including integration adapters, API bridges, and automation scripts.

Take POCs through to reference-quality implementations where appropriate, contributing clean, maintainable code.

Document findings, limitations, and recommended next steps for every POC.

3. Handover & Documentation

Create structured handover packages for product and deployment teams: runbooks, decision logs, open item trackers, and escalation paths.

Maintain a growing library of reference architectures and integration patterns as reusable assets across engagements.

Ensure nothing falls through the gap between a sales commitment and a working deployment.

4. Cross-functional Technical Leadership

Act as the primary technical liaison between sales, product, engineering, and the client — translating requirements in both directions.

Identify risks early and propose pragmatic mitigations without stalling progress.

Feed deployment learnings and client signals back into CARPL's product roadmap discussions.

Core Requirements

System Design & Architecture

Solid grounding in system design, you can design a distributed system on a whiteboard and then go build it.

Familiarity with common architecture patterns: microservices, event-driven architecture, API gateway, CQRS, pub/sub.

Understanding of how to make tradeoffs between consistency, availability, latency, and cost in real systems.

Understanding of secure design principles and data protection techniques, including encryption (at-rest and in-transit).

Experience designing and implementing robust access control mechanisms, such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Single Sign-On (SSO), and the principle of least privilege.

Knowledge of vulnerability management, secure coding standards (e.g., OWASP Top 10), and integrating vulnerability testing into CI/CD pipelines.

2. Hands-on Engineering

Proficiency in at least one backend language, Python (preferred), Go, or Java, and the confidence to write production-quality code without supervision.

Experience building REST or gRPC APIs, integration adapters, and automation scripts from scratch.

Comfortable with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and standard DevOps tooling.

3. Databases

Hands-on experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) — schema design, query optimisation, indexing.

Working knowledge of at least one NoSQL store (MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, DynamoDB) and when to use it.

Understanding of data modelling tradeoffs for operational vs. analytical workloads.

4. Cloud & Infrastructure

Practical experience on at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) including compute, storage, networking, managed services & cloud firewall and security rules.

Familiarity with containerisation (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) in production or near-production environments.

Ability to size infrastructure, estimate costs, and build a credible deployment plan for a client.

Client-facing & Communication

Strong written and verbal communication: comfortable presenting architecture to a CTO or CPO and explaining tradeoffs to a developer.

Experience writing technical documentation, RFP/RFI responses, solution proposals, or architecture design documents.

Skilled at producing clear diagrams (Lucidchart, draw.io, Miro, or similar).

Experience

4+ years in solutions architecture, technical pre-sales engineering, software engineering, or a combination.

Track record of owning end-to-end technical integrations with enterprise or mid-market clients.

Experience navigating procurement cycles: security reviews, compliance questionnaires, vendor assessments.