Manager, Solutions Architecture - Platforms (Chicago)

Job Overview

We're seeking a Manager, Solutions Architecture - Platforms to lead our team in Chicago. Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, serving millions of companies worldwide.

About The Team

The Platforms Solutions Architecture Team partners with users to realise their full potential through prescriptive solutions that drive growth and success. As a manager, you will lead, build, and mentor a world-class pre-sales engineering team to grow the existing user base through upsells, cross-sells, and cosells.

Responsibilities

• Business and technical thought leader able to partner and drive the strategy and execution plan for the segment, working with cross-functional partners
• Recruit, hire, lead, retain, and coach a world-class pre-sales team
• Align with a leader for your segment to understand trends and share insights for Stripe's leadership and product teams
• Nurture and be the role-model of a positive outlook, can-do attitude, and growth mindset, while leading and keeping the SAs motivated in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment
• Define and drive success for your team by empowering them to nurture and grow existing business through upsells and cross-sell motions
• Partner closely with Sales, Marketing, and Technical Teams to develop joint go-to-market initiatives that drive positive user experience and outcomes while driving revenue retention and growth
• Executive engagement skills and presence, with an ability to establish strong relationships with key decision-makers and build credibility at all levels
• Serve as an executive champion and lead EBCs with key customers
• Maintain a strong internal relationship with the product teams and champion the voice of our users and customers to influence product direction and feature priorities
• Drive collaboration across teams to influence and unify stakeholders at all levels of the organisation
• Lead and support the team in complex evaluations, problem-solving, and challenging customer environments
• Build processes to measure the performance and impact of the Solutions Architecture Team and ensure that the team is optimised to meet rapidly evolving business needs
• Stay current on industry trends and competitive dynamics, and leverage this knowledge to shape strategy around user engagements
• Represent Stripe at industry events and conferences, customer business reviews, and contribute to new ideas and industry best practices
• Act as an escalation point for pre-sales and post-sales technical issues that arise

Minimum Requirements

• At least 3+ years of pre-sales leadership experience
• 10+ years' experience within a technical sales / consulting / implementation / GTM function
• A track record of building and leading world-class solution architecture / engineering teams ideally in a SaaS or usage-based businesses
• Energy, enthusiasm, and passion for making customers successful
• Previous technical sales experience with APIs and / or payments industry experience
• Strong executive presence and ability to foster deep relationships with our users
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent military experience required
• Willingness to travel approximately 25% of the time to engage with customers and collaborate with internal teams
• Bonus - Experience working with SaaS Platform business models