Principal Solutions Architect in London

Requirements

• Extensive years of experience in a relevant role: Solutions Architect, Solutions Engineer, Senior Solutions Consultant, Technical Consultant, or similar in a SaaS / digital platform environment.
• Strong experience with integration‐heavy solutions involving APIs, webhooks, SSO/identity, and data pipelines.
• Experience working with at least some of the following: CRM (Salesforce, Dynamics, HubSpot, etc.), contact centre / ticketing tools (Zendesk, ServiceNow, etc.), marketing automation, CDP/DMP, data warehouses/BI tools.
• Background in social media / digital marketing / customer care platforms is a strong plus, ideally with tools like Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Sprout, Khoros, Brandwatch, Talkwalker, etc.
• Proven track record acting as a bridge between business stakeholders and technical teams, ideally in a role reporting into a Solutions / Professional Services / Customer Success organization.
• Solid understanding of modern web and SaaS architectures: RESTful APIs, webhooks, OAuth/SSO, microservices, event‐driven workflows.
• Ability to read API documentation, reason about data models, and specify integration patterns (batch vs real‐time, push vs pull, error handling, monitoring).
• Comfort discussing technical topics with engineers (data structures, rate limits, performance considerations) even if you are not the one writing production code.
• Familiarity with data concepts: data mapping, normalization, basic SQL or BI concepts, and how social data flows into broader customer data ecosystems.
• Strong ability to translate technical possibilities and limitations into clear business impacts and trade‐offs.
• User and value‐oriented mindset: always able to answer 'who is this for, what changes for them, and how do we measure success?'
• Comfortable working in a fast‐moving environment with evolving requirements; able to iterate quickly while maintaining architectural rigor.
• Customer Focus: Demonstrated desire to proactively help internal/external customers meet their needs.
• Open Communication: clearly conveys thoughts, both written and verbally, listening attentively and asking questions for clarification and understanding.
• Collaboration and Teamwork: working with others to deliver results, meaningfully contributing to the team, being a dependable partner.
• Solution seeker: focused on tackling new challenges, solving problems, and moving the business forward—and you don't wait to be asked.
• Lifelong learner: growth mindset – you're here to learn, experiment, seek, apply, and provide feedback, share what works with your team, and move on from what doesn't.
• Resilient adapter: in the face of change and challenges, you bring a thoughtful, calm approach, and a focus on finding the new opportunity.
• Intentional collaborator: build positive working relationships across the business, bringing people together to foster new opportunities and facilitate the efficient flow of information.
• Critical challenger: have the trust in your team to ask difficult questions in order to get to the best end result.
• Active communicator: listen actively and communicate ideas and information clearly, inclusively, and proactively.
• Integrated thinker: look beyond your role and responsibilities to understand how your team's work drives broader organizational goals.
• Accountable owner: take pride in the work you're responsible for with a mindset of ultimate accountability and reliability for the outcomes.
• Bar-raiser: step up to help your team grow and succeed, even when that means going beyond what might be expected.

What the job involves

• The Principal Solutions Architect will own the end‐to‐end design of complex customer/prospect solutions built on top of our social media management platform, with a strong focus on integrations, workflows, and measurable business value.
• This person will act as the bridge between customer‐facing teams (mostly AMs and AEs) and Product & Tech: translating client use cases and operational constraints into robust technical architectures, and turning those architectures into clear, actionable briefs for our product managers and engineering teams.
• In line with Hootsuite's distributed workforce strategy, our flexible work arrangement allows for remote work.
• In this role, you will report to the Solutions Director.
• Participate in strategic client / prospects meetings and discovery workshops with strategic/enterprise accounts to understand business objectives, current tools, and operational constraints.
• Challenge and refine client requirements, uncovering underlying needs and proposing pragmatic solutions grounded in our platform capabilities.
• Articulate complex technical concepts in simple, non‐technical language to senior business stakeholders (CMO, Head of Social, Customer Care, Digital, Data teams).
• Act as a trusted advisor on topics such as social data architecture, governance, workflow design, and integration strategy notably on RFP or RFI.
• Lead the design of end‐to‐end solutions that leverage our core platform capabilities (publishing, engagement, listening, analytics, governance) and integrate with external systems (CRM, customer care platforms, marketing automation, data warehouses, BI tools, etc.).
• Translate complex integration requirements (APIs, webhooks, SSO, data sync, custom workflows) into user‐centric, value‐oriented solution designs.
• Produce clear architecture artefacts when needed: solution blueprints, sequence diagrams, data flow diagrams, and configuration guides.
• Evaluate feasibility, risks, and trade‐offs of different solution approaches, always balancing speed, robustness, and scalability.
• Translate client and operational needs into structured, actionable briefs for Product and Engineering:
• Clear problem statements and business context.
• Detailed functional and non‐functional requirements.
• Edge cases, constraints, and acceptance criteria.
• Work closely with Product Managers to prioritise requirements, shape roadmaps, and assess build‐vs‐configure‐vs‐integrate options.
• Partner with Engineering to validate technical designs, refine implementation details, and ensure solutions we would be pushing to our clients/prospects are aligned with platform architecture and standards or alternatively set guardrails and manage expectations.
• Provide feedback loops from the field back into the product: recurring patterns, blockers, integration gaps, and opportunities for new capabilities.
• Guide project teams (PS, Customer Success, Partner teams) during implementation as the 'design authority' for the solution.
• Review technical configurations and integration setups to ensure they adhere to the agreed architecture and best practices.
• Help define standards, patterns, and reusable assets (templates, reference architectures, integration playbooks) that make future projects faster and more consistent.