Director of Solutions Architecture in London

The Director of Solutions Architecture is a commercial leadership role. The primary mandate is driving new and expansion Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) by deploying the right SA talent on the right deals, removing architecture friction from the sales cycle, and making this team a reason Diligent wins, not a checkpoint that slows the process down. This function operates in service of Sales, not above it. The operating standards, escalation frameworks, and quality gates in this practice exist to move faster and win more credibly — not to police the deal. The Director's job is to ensure that is what they actually do in practice.

Where the Principal Solutions Architect owns the technical standard, the Director owns the people, the coverage, and the commercial outcomes: new ARR, expansion ARR, and Gross Dollar Retention (GDR) on large enterprise accounts. Global scope means managing talent across Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific with consistent standards and commercially grounded deployment decisions. This role is for people who want to build the team and own what it produces commercially.

Organizational scope

Sales is the primary commercial partner. The Director works with Sales leadership — regionally and globally — on pipeline strategy, SA coverage decisions, and removing architecture friction from the deal cycle. This is not a support relationship; it is a joint ownership of ARR outcomes. Professional Services, Customer Success, and Value Engineering are organizational peers. The Principal Solutions Architect sets the technical standard; the Director ensures the team is deployed in a way that makes Sales faster, more credible, and more commercially effective on complex deals.

What you'll do

• Partner with Sales leadership as a commercial peer: align SA capacity to pipeline strategy, make coverage decisions that maximize ARR impact, and ensure the SA function is accelerating the sales cycle on complex deals — not creating process overhead; when Sales moves slower because of SA, that is a Director-level problem to fix.
• Own new and expansion ARR as a team outcome: the SA function's commercial value is measured in deals won and accounts grown, not artifacts produced; set the deployment model, deal prioritization, and engagement standards that make SA a competitive differentiator on the accounts that matter most.
• Own the global SA team: hiring, onboarding, performance management, and organizational design across SA1 through Senior Solutions Architect — globally, across Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific.
• Hold direct accountability for Gross Dollar Retention on large enterprise accounts — track the metric, own the outcome, and drive the operational changes required to move it; GDR is the downstream measure of SA quality; if retention is at risk on a key account, the architecture the SA team produced in presales is part of the diagnosis.
• Build and maintain consistent performance standards globally: the same quality bar, escalation protocols, and development frameworks operate in every region — regional performance variance is a signal to act, not accept.
• Build the SA talent pipeline: identify high-potential SA1s and SA2s early, develop structured growth paths, and own the promotion decision framework in partnership with the Principal Solutions Architect's competency standards.
• Own SA capacity planning and headcount allocation: model coverage requirements by region and pillar, identify gaps before Sales leadership does, and make the case for resourcing with commercial data — not anecdote.
• Represent the SA function in executive-level conversations about pipeline health, delivery risk, retention performance, and talent gaps — as an owner with a position, not a reporter with an update.
• Partner with Professional Services leadership on GDR-critical accounts where post-signature delivery risk is directly connected to the architecture the SA team produced in presales.
• Drive alignment with Customer Success on expansion architecture: the accounts this team supported in presales are the same accounts Customer Success is trying to expand — own the continuity.
• Own SA practice budget and resource allocation; make investment decisions that are commercially justified and operationally grounded.

What we're looking for

• 10+ years in enterprise SaaS pre-sales or solutions architecture, with 3+ years managing a team of senior technical professionals across more than one geography.
• Demonstrated GDR or retention accountability — has owned an outcome tied to customer retention, not just supported it; can point to specific operational changes they drove and the commercial result.
• Track record building and developing high-performing technical teams globally: has hired, developed, and promoted senior SA talent, and can point to the people whose trajectory they directly influenced.
• Commercial sophistication: understands how team deployment, coverage decisions, and talent development choices affect Annual Recurring Revenue and retention outcomes — and can make that argument at the executive level.
• Manages effectively across global teams with different regional contexts: does not impose one operating model on all geographies but maintains consistent standards without erasing local effectiveness.

Preferred

• Experience running a global SA or Solutions Engineering function with regional leads in place.
• Familiarity with Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) domain — directly relevant given Diligent's enterprise customer base and the complexity of the deals this team supports.
• Background building structured development programs — not just coaching — that show up in measurable promotion rates and team retention.

About Us

Diligent is the AI leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) SaaS solutions, helping more than 1 million users and 700,000 board members to clarify risk and elevate governance. The Diligent One Platform gives practitioners, the C-Suite and the board a consolidated view of their entire GRC practice so they can more effectively manage risk, build greater resilience and make better decisions, faster.

At Diligent, we're building the future with people who think boldly and move fast. Whether you're designing systems that leverage large language models or part of a team reimaging workflows with AI, you'll help us unlock entirely new ways of working and thinking. Curiosity is in our DNA, we look for individuals willing to ask the big questions and experiment fearlessly - those who embrace change not as a challenge, but as an opportunity. The future belongs to those who keep learning, and we are building it together. At Diligent, you’re not just building the future - you’re an agent of positive change, joining a global community on a mission to make an impact.

What Diligent Offers You

• Creativity is ingrained in our culture. We are innovative collaborators by nature. We thrive in exploring how things can be differently both in our internal processes and to help our clients.
• We care about our people. Diligent offers a flexible work environment, global days of service, comprehensive health benefits, meeting free days, generous time off policy and wellness programs to name a few.
• We have teams all over the world. We may be headquartered in New York City, but we have office hubs in Washington D.C., Vancouver, London, Galway, Budapest, Munich, Bengaluru, Singapore, and Sydney.
• Diversity is important to us. Growing, maintaining and promoting a diverse team is a top priority for us. We foster and encourage diversity through our Employee Resource Groups and provide access to resources and education to support the education of our team, facilitate dialogue, and foster understanding.

Diligent created the modern governance movement. Our world-changing idea is to empower leaders with the technology, insights and connections they need to drive greater impact and accountability – to lead with purpose. Our employees are passionate, smart, and creative people who not only want to help build the software company of the future, but who want to make the world a more sustainable, equitable and better place.

To foster strong collaboration and connection, this role will follow a hybrid work model. If you are within a commuting distance to one of our Diligent office locations, you will be expected to work onsite at least 50% of the time. We believe that in-person engagement helps drive innovation, teamwork, and a strong sense of community.

We are a drug free workplace. Diligent is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, pregnancy, childbirth, physical disability, mental disability, age, military status, protected veteran status, marital status, registered domestic partner or civil union status, gender (including sex stereotyping and gender identity or expression), medical condition (including, but not limited to, cancer related or HIV/AIDS related), genetic information, or sexual orientation in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at recruitment@diligent.com.