Principal Solutions Architect

This is not a typical solutions architect seat. You won't be running pre-sales demos or responding to RFPs. You'll be embedded full-time inside one of the largest financial institutions in the United States - living in their architecture review boards, holding design authority over how NX1 is deployed and integrated across their data infrastructure, and doing the technical farming that drives expansion: identifying the next workload class the customer's architecture is ready for before they know it themselves. The role is intentionally split: 65% solution architecture and use-case discovery, 35% engagement management. The 65% is the center of gravity. Credibility at this customer is earned through technical depth, not relationship tenure. You'll be the daily technical presence at every architecture conversation, hold design authority over NX1 deployment patterns across the account, and own the integration design across the customer's data and security infrastructure. The 35% exists to prevent the role from drifting into pure delivery work. It covers internal coordination across NX1 functions, executive relationship maintenance at the customer, escalation leadership, and - critically - the clean handoff of expansion theses to the NX1 account executive on each account you cover. Expansion in these accounts originates with you; the AE closes it. The handoff has to be clean. This is the inaugural deployment of this role at Nexus Cognitive. You'll be shaping what "Principal SA" means here, not inheriting a playbook someone else built. What You'll Do Architecture & Technical Farming (65%) • Hold design authority over NX1 deployment patterns at the customer - attend and actively contribute to architecture review boards, security reviews, and data governance forums • Design and defend the integration architecture across the customer's data stack: identity federation, CDC patterns, governance metadata, data lineage, network segmentation, encryption • Identify the next workloads NX1 is positioned to support before the customer has fully articulated them - and qualify those opportunities with stakeholder context and technical depth before handing them to the AE • Produce high-quality design documents that hold up to hostile review boards without you in the room • Serve as the technical escalation point when NX1 deployment issues arise at the customer Engagement & Commercial Partnership (35%) • Own the NX1 internal cadence on the account - keep engineering, FDEs, product, and the AE aligned on what's happening at the customer • Maintain executive-level relationships with customer business and IT leadership at the appropriate cadence • Translate architectural farming insights into AE-usable expansion theses: technical case, stakeholder map, rough scope, customer political context - qualified opportunities, not loose architectural musings • Own escalation leadership when something breaks - you're the person in the room • Navigate vendor governance at a major bank: third-party risk reviews, audit responses, change management, vendor due diligence What We're Looking For Required • 12-18 years in enterprise data/cloud architecture as an SA, principal engineer, or equivalent • At least one prior multi-year embedded engagement at a Tier 1 bank or equivalent regulated enterprise - you know what it means to be a vendor inside another organization's culture for 12+ months • Hands-on or recent hands-on depth in the modern OSS data stack: Spark, Trino, Airflow, Iceberg, Kubernetes, S3-compatible object storage, Kafka - at petabyte scale, with hundreds of pipelines • Experience producing and defending design documents in front of hostile architecture review boards • Track record of identifying expansion or net-new use cases through architectural insight at a large customer - named examples of "I saw the customer's next workload before they did, qualified it, and partnered with sales to expand" • Willingness to be on-site in Charlotte, NC (primary) and NYC (secondary) at 80%+ cadence • Deep familiarity with bank IT culture and governance: risk and control frameworks, TPRM, change management, audit cycles, regulatory reporting patterns Strong differentiators • Prior embedded experience in a highly regulated industry, as a vendor SA • Hands-on with relevant workloads: regulatory reporting pipelines, CCAR/DFAST data, AML/KYC, customer 360, treasury and liquidity • Open-source contributions in NX1 stack components (Iceberg, Spark, Trino, Airflow) • Conference presence at Subsurface, Trino Summit, or Airflow Summit in FS-adjacent tracks