Sr. Solutions Architect (Pre-Sales)
COMPANY DESCRIPTION
Rancher Government Solutions (RGS) is specifically designed to address the unique security and operational needs of the U.S. Government and military as it relates to application modernization, containers, and Kubernetes.
Rancher is a complete open-source software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operations and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters at scale, while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads.
RGS supports all Rancher products with U.S. based American citizen with the highest security clearances who are currently supporting programs across the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and civilian agencies.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Senior Solutions Architect plays a key pre-sales leadership role, owning the technical strategy and “technical win” for each qualified customer opportunity. This individual engages deeply with customer stakeholders to understand mission requirements, align RGS solutions with their modernization initiatives, and guide them from concept to validated architecture.
This role requires strong expertise in Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies, deep familiarity with Linux, DevOps automation, GitOps practices, and infrastructure-as-code, and the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive audiences.
The Senior SA serves as the trusted advisor and technical lead for strategic accounts, shaping architectures, delivering proof-of-concepts, and influencing solution adoption across the enterprise.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead technical discovery, architecture design, and solution validation activities within assigned accounts.
- Present RGS solutions and demonstrate how they solve customer pain points across container orchestration, automation, and platform management.
- Develop and deliver POCs, demos, and reference architectures leveraging the Rancher, RKE2, and Harvester stack.
- Provide technical leadership during proposal and design phases, ensuring alignment with security and compliance requirements in DoD, IC, and civilian environments.
- Partner closely with account executives on go-to-market strategy, pipeline development, and QBRs.
- Mentor junior engineers and represent RGS at industry and customer events.
- Other duties as assigned.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Deep hands-on experience with on prem Kubernetes and its ecosystem (CNCF tooling, Helm, Prometheus, GitOps frameworks, etc.).
- Strong background in DevOps, automation, and infrastructure-as-code (Ansible, Terraform, ArgoCD, Flux, etc.).
- Advanced Linux systems knowledge, including multiple distributions (SUSE, RHEL, Ubuntu, etc.).
- Familiarity with container runtimes, networking (CNI), storage (CSI), and security in production environments.
- Experience architecting or operating in cloud and hybrid environments (AWS, Azure, on-prem).
- Proven ability to design and articulate solutions that meet customer technical and business objectives.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills with both engineering and executive audiences.
- Experience with U.S. Government customers
- Prior Experience in pre-sales technical roles
- U.S. Citizen and eligible for a U.S. Security Clearance.
- Reside within the Continental U.S.
- Travel up to 50% within assigned territory plus annual global Sales Kickoff and select conferences.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience leading or mentoring technical teams.
- Experience with Rancher, Harvester, or comparable hyperconverged/Kubernetes-based virtualization platforms.
- Background with VMware, OpenShift, or other enterprise virtualization solutions.
- Familiarity with DoD, IC, or federal IT modernization initiatives and security frameworks (STIGs, RMF, etc.).
- Prior experience supporting solutions engineering, or technical consulting roles.