Senior Manager, Solutions Architecture - Growth

Senior Manager, Solutions Architecture — Temporal

About Us

Temporal is an open source programming model. The pitch is simple: simpler code, more reliable applications, and developers spending their time on features instead of fighting infrastructure. We want to be the thing every developer reaches for without thinking twice about it — the reliable foundation in their toolbox. That's the mission, and we're building the team to make it real.

Our values aren't something we keep in a deck somewhere. They show up in how we make calls, how we treat each other, how we actually work. Curious. Driven. Collaborative. Genuine. Humble. Pretty short list, but we take it seriously.

We're growing, and honestly, we're looking for people who fit that list — people who'll question "that's just how it's always been done" instead of shrugging and going along with it, and who want a real say in where this company heads next. If the developer experience is something you actually care about, and building great open-source software (plus the community that comes with it) sounds like your kind of problem, we should talk.

The Role

We need a Senior Manager of Solutions Architecture to run our Scale and Enterprise Solutions Architects, sitting inside the Growth org. This is a pre-sales technical team. Their job: help prospects figure out if Temporal actually fits their applications, make the technical case for our cloud service stick, and keep adoption growing once customers are in production. Temporal Cloud is what gets sold here — that's the whole point — and whoever takes this role needs to make sure that value comes through clearly in every single engagement, not just the easy ones.

What we want is someone with real technical chops who's also run a solutions-oriented team before, ideally somewhere in open source or developer infrastructure. Curious by nature. Disciplined about process without being rigid about it. And strategic enough to know when a deal is worth going deep on technically and when it's time to move on.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership & Development

Recruiting, hiring, onboarding, growing the team — that's the baseline. Beyond that, you're setting real expectations, building coaching habits that actually stick (not just quarterly check-ins for the sake of it), and laying out career paths people can see themselves in. You'll keep the team curious and sharp, with customer obsession baked in rather than bolted on, and you'll put real process behind technical discovery, proof-of-value engagements, and deal support — process the team will actually use, not just nod along to in a meeting.

Sales Strategy & Process

You're working closely with Sales leadership and Account Executives here, building and running account strategy together. A big part of this: making sure technical discovery actually digs into the right use cases and finds the real champions, not just whoever picked up the phone first. The other part is knowing where to point your team's time — pipeline coverage matters, but so does deal quality, and you're the one balancing those two things. You bring structure to the pre-sales process from first qualification all the way to technical win, while still leaving room to adapt when a customer's situation doesn't fit the playbook. And on the biggest, messiest deals? You're the one people escalate to.

Technical Leadership

You'll coach the team on how to position Temporal against competing tech and architectural approaches — clearly, credibly, and without the overselling that erodes trust. Your Solutions Architects should be just as comfortable talking about where Temporal's platform falls short as they are talking about where it shines; customers can tell the difference, and they respect it. You stay hands-on with the product yourself, keep close to what's actually shipping and what's on the roadmap, and you're the one carrying the customer's voice back into Product, Engineering, and Marketing.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

You'll work with Customer Success, Professional Services, and Developer Relations to keep the handoff after a sale smooth — nobody likes when that part gets fumbled. You'll partner with Marketing on field content, competitive positioning, events. And with Product, making sure what customers actually need (not just what they say they need) makes it back to the people building the roadmap.

What You'll Bring

Experience


5+ years in Solutions Architecture, Sales Engineering, or something close to it, with at least 2 of those years managing or leading a technical pre-sales team
A real track record at open-source, developer-tools, or infrastructure companies — selling to developer communities is its own thing, and you've done it
Hands-on technical background — distributed systems, microservices, event-driven architectures, that world
You can write real code in at least one language Temporal supports: Java, Go, TypeScript, Python, C#, or PHP
You've worked with at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure) and you're comfortable in modern dev/deployment tooling — CI/CD, containers, orchestration, all of it


Skills and Competencies

Process-driven, not bureaucratic. You bring structure and repeatability to technical sales, but it never feels like red tape. Playbooks get built. The right indicators get tracked. People get coached through it instead of just handed a document.

Discovery is where you live. Getting past the surface-level ask to the actual problem, finding the right people in the room, tying all of it back to a business outcome — that's second nature to you.

You know where to spend your time. Some deals deserve a deep dive, some need to be qualified out early, and you can tell the difference. Long-term relationships matter, but so does near-term pipeline, and you weigh both without losing sleep over it.

Genuinely curious — not just on the resume. Tech, business, doesn't matter — you pick things up fast and you stay current, even when the day-to-day gets repetitive.

You can talk to anyone. Break down a complex technical concept for an exec audience one minute, go deep in the weeds with an engineering team the next, without missing a beat either way.