Senior Solutions Architect - Central (Professional Services)

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital. The role, in a nutshell: As a Solutions Architect, you will be part of the Professional Services team within Customer Success, working in direct partnership with our customers. In this role, you will lead implementations and empower customers to use Chainguard in order to build secure software. You will embody our company value, “We are customer obsessed” by ensuring the customers are our top priority in the implementation and onboarding lifecycle. As the closest technical team member in contact with our customers, you not only are the “face of Chainguard” to our end users, you will have an opportunity to directly collaborate and innovate with the product and engineering team to ensure we are supporting and continuing to build solutions that our customers love. What you’ll do: Lead technical implementations and drive adoption of Chainguard images, helping customers build securely with open source software across their organization Partner with the account team (AEs, SEs, CSMs, and Support) to understand customer vision, pain points, and proposed solution in order to drive account level strategies, value realization, and retention/growth Ensure Chainguard Images are of highest quality - acting as “customer zero” - testing, documenting, and ensuring a smooth customer onboarding experience Partner with our Product and Engineering teams to convey customer requirements and determine the right prioritization for image build Maintain appropriate account level architecture and share best practices and lessons learned across the organization Be a team player - collaborate, teach, and learn from the Chainguard team What we're looking for: Minimum 4+ years experience in a post-sales role supporting clients 8+ years of experience developing high performance multi-tier applications. Strong experience in Kubernetes and Containers Ability to communicate technical information in highly technical and non-technical ways depending on the audience, which includes various personas, such as engineers to executives Continuous learner who has a strong intellectual drive for excellence and the desire to develop solutions to complex problems At least a Bachelor’s Degree with a focus in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology Strong working experience with software development processes, practices, and software engineering design concepts Ability to work effectively with cross functional engineering teams and business partners Excellent written and verbal communication skills Ability to travel up to 15% of the time Located in the Central Time Zone Compensation: up to $195,000 base salary + bonus + equity If your experience is close but doesn’t fulfill all requirements, please apply. Chainguard is on a mission to build the best team. To achieve our goal, we are focused on hiring Chainguardians with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. About Us We live and breathe our company values: We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better. We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast. We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey. We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent w