Pre-Sales Solution Architect

Job description

**If you believe data is the root of all problems in automation, you already speak our language. The question is: can you work as a trusted advisor to network automation teams?** Most infrastructure teams are still duct-taping their way through automation. The problem isn't a lack of tools. It's the absence of a proper data foundation, a real source of truth, that makes everything else fall apart. Network teams know they have a problem. They can feel it. They just can't articulate it yet. That's where you come in. OpsMill is building the data foundation for infrastructure automation. Our platform, Infrahub, unifies infrastructure intent data using modern graph technology. We're a commercial open-source company founded by practitioners, backed by engineers who've lived the problem. Smart people are already here. More are joining. We're looking for the person who closes the technical gap in the deal cycle: someone who can walk into a room of sceptical network engineers, diagnose their situation with surgical precision, and be a trusted technical advisor to help them towards their goals. ## Why This Role Is Different This isn't a Solutions Engineer role where you demo software and hand off. And it isn't a consultant role where you disappear after the engagement. This is a trusted advisor relationship, from first conversation to long-term production success and beyond. You'll be the person customers call when they're stuck, when the architecture decision matters, when they need someone who understands their environment as well as they do. You won't just be closing deals, you'll be choosing partners. The organisations OpsMill works with need to be the right fit for us as much as we are for them, and you'll have the judgment to know the difference. You'll qualify with the same rigour you bring to solution design, because a bad-fit customer isn't a win. The customers who are the right fit will remember you. Not because you sold them something, but because you helped them solve something. That distinction matters here. You'll also shape how we grow. Your intelligence from the field feeds directly into product, positioning, and how we think about the market. ## What You'll Own - **Lead the technical win** across the full pre-sales cycle: discovery, qualification, solution design, PoC delivery, and technical close, partnered with the field team but driving the technical narrative - **Run killer discovery calls** that uncover the real problem beneath the stated problem, identifying where a customer's automation stack is fundamentally broken at the data layer - **Design and build custom PoCs** that demonstrate Infrahub solving real infrastructure challenges, not canned demos, but tailored proof that this works *for them* - **Own the technical relationship** with key customer stakeholders from hands-on engineers to Directors of Infrastructure, adapting your message without losing credibility at either end - **Qualify hard and fast**: recognise when a prospect isn't a fit, disqualify cleanly, and keep the pipeline healthy rather than full of noise - **Partner with technology alliances**: network vendors, systems integrators, automation tooling companies, to build joint solutions and expand our reach through the ecosystem - **Bridge field and product**: bring structured customer insight back to engineering and product teams, turning customer pain into roadmap priorities - **Build the technical community** through demo content, blog posts, reference architectures, and conference appearances that make OpsMill the authoritative voice in infrastructure automation ## What You Bring - **7+ years in a pre-sales, solutions engineering, or field engineering role** - quota-contributing or quota-carrying, where your technical output directly influenced commercial outcomes - **Genuine infrastructure automation depth**: you've built and run production automation for networks, cloud, or data centre environments using tools like Ansible, Nornir, Terraform, or similar - **Strong Python skills**: you can write clean automation code, review customer implementations, and build PoC integrations that hold up under scrutiny - **Proven discovery and qualification instincts**: you know how to ask the questions that surface the real problem, and you know when to walk away from a deal that won't close - **The ability to work a room**: engineers trust you because you know what you're talking about; executives trust you because you make complexity legible - **Comfort operating without a playbook**: you've been first or second pre-sales engineer into a market, built the motion, and figured things out without someone handing you a script - **AI Native** - You've moved well beyond asking ChatGPT basic questions and are now doing spec-driven automation code development - **Location in US or Canada** for timezone alignment with team and customers ## Nice-to-Haves - Track record influencing six-figure or seven-figure technical decisions in enterprise accounts - Experience selling or implementing commercial open-source software (GitLab, HashiCorp, Grafana, or similar models) - Familiarity with graph databases, data modelling, or schema design - Network automation background - campus, data centre, or cloud networking in production - Active open-source community presence or technical content creation ## Location & Travel - **Remote-first**: work from anywhere in the US or Canada - **Travel**: twice-yearly company offsites, plus regular customer meetings, partner events, and industry conferences (estimated 25–30%) - **Work authorisation**: must be authorised to work in your country of residence ## Compensation & Benefits Competitive base salary, equity, and comprehensive benefits. Specifics discussed during the process. - Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage - Flexible PTO - Home office setup allowance - Professional development budget - Equity in a growing commercial open-source company - Twice-yearly offsites in locations worth travelling to ## Why OpsMill **The people**: world-class engineers who've built and scaled automation in production. You'll be challenged daily. **The product**: Infrahub is early-stage with serious technical depth. Your customer feedback shapes the roadmap directly, not through a committee, through a conversation. **The mission**: making enterprise-grade infrastructure automation accessible to any organisation. Open-source at the core, production-ready out of the box. This is a multi-year journey with multiple products along the way. **The moment**: infrastructure automation is at an inflection point. GitOps, IaC, and modern frameworks are everywhere, but the data layer that makes them work together is missing. We're building it. You'd be one of the first to take it to market. ## About You You're not looking for a role where you support sales. You're looking for a role where you *are* the reason deals close. You build trust with engineers because you've done the work. You build trust with executives because you translate complexity without dumbing it down. You don't wait to be told what to do. You see the gap and fill it. If you need a mature sales motion, a full SDR team, and a detailed process for every scenario, this isn't the right fit. If you want to build something that doesn't exist yet, at a company that's solving a genuinely hard problem, with colleagues who are as serious about it as you are, then read on. ## How to Apply Tell us three things: 1. **A pre-sales win you're proud of**: what the technical challenge was, how you designed the solution, and how you got the room to believe in it 2. **The hairiest infrastructure automation problem you've personally solved**: and how you approached it 3. **What you're looking for in your next move**: be specific