Principal Solutions Architect

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: you have a 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: you build positive working relationships across the business, bringing people together to foster new opportunities and to facilitate the efficient flow of information.
• Critical challenger: you have the trust in your team to ask difficult questions in order to get to the best end result.
• Active communicator: you listen actively and communicate ideas and information clearly, inclusively, and proactively.
• Integrated thinker: you look beyond your role and responsibilities to understand how your team’s work drives broader organizational goals.
• Accountable owner: you take pride in the work you’re responsible for with a mindset of ultimate accountability and reliability for the outcomes.
• Bar-raiser: you 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.