Solutions Architect Associate

Title: Solutions Architect Associate Location: Chicago, Illinois

Major retailers keep tightening their supplier compliance requirements, and small and mid-market companies often lack the staff or systems to keep up. The Solutions Architect is the technical owner of the sales cycle for these customers, with defined, repeatable use cases such as trading partner compliance, EDI onboarding, and standard B2B supply chain connectivity. Working directly with the Sales team, the Solutions Architect runs discovery, scopes the solution, delivers the demo or POC, and hands off to Customer Success and Professional Services. The role suits someone who has worked in a customer-facing technical role, can run a deal independently, and can explain EDI and supply chain requirements clearly to business owners and IT managers. They draw on expertise across the team and organization, and use AI and other tools in their daily work to produce better outcomes for prospects and for Cleo.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Own the technical side of the sales cycle for standard use cases, from first discovery call through close, working alongside the Sales team
• Conduct discovery sessions directly with prospective and existing customers to gather business and technology requirements, including identifying where AI-powered capabilities deliver the highest value
• Explain the business case for Cleo to business owners, IT managers, and operations leads at small and mid-market organizations
• Recommend and scope standard integration patterns for each prospect’s ERP or accounting system and trading partner requirements, using Cleo reference architectures and templates
• Demonstrate the value of Cleo solutions through presentations and demonstrations on-site and remote
• Complete the technical sections of RFI/RFPs and security questionnaires
• Explain Cleo’s AI capabilities accurately in customer conversations
• Apply AI tools across the sales cycle and in day-to-day work, from researching new concepts and understanding customer scenarios to sharpening discovery hypotheses and producing customer-facing assets and demonstration proof points
• Manage a high volume of concurrent opportunities with short cycle times
• Recognize when an opportunity falls outside the standard patterns, and flag it to Sales and Solutions leadership early so it is qualified and staffed correctly
• Collaborate with Product Management to provide voice-of-the-customer feedback, influencing the roadmap based on patterns observed across prospect engagements
• Partner with Customer Success and Professional Services to ensure smooth technical handoffs post-close, with clear documentation of customer architecture and agreed use cases
• Contribute to the SA knowledge base by building reusable assets, demo scripts, and POC frameworks that scale pre-sales team capacity

Supply Chain Fluency

This role calls for working knowledge of how supply chains, trading partner compliance programs, and common systems of record operate, enough to advise a small or mid-market customer on standard use cases.

AI Fluency Competencies

The role has an AI dimension on two fronts: using AI tools to do pre-sales work faster and better, and explaining Cleo’s AI-powered capabilities to prospects.

• Uses AI tools daily for discovery prep, call summaries, demo and POC builds, and customer documentation, and validates the output before it goes to a customer
• Explains Cleo’s AI-powered capabilities accurately and credibly to technical and business audiences, and connects them to a customer’s specific problem
• Knows the limits of the product’s AI capabilities and does not overstate them

Prerequisites

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience
• 2+ years in a pre-sales, solutions engineering, implementation, technical support, or other customer-facing technical role within a B2B SaaS, iPaaS, EDI, or supply chain software environment
• Working knowledge of EDI (X12 or EDIFACT) and common B2B protocols such as AS2 and SFTP
• Understanding of core supply chain processes including Order-to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay
• Working knowledge of REST/SOAP APIs and JSON/XML data structures
• Demonstrated ability to run discovery calls, demonstrations, and POCs independently, and to manage the technical track of a sales cycle from start to close
• Comfort using AI tools in daily work and explaining AI-powered product capabilities clearly to customers

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience with AI/ML-powered SaaS features, including LLM applications, agentic AI workflows, or intelligent automation
• Familiarity with systems common at small and mid-market companies, such as accounting packages and mid-market ERPs, and with retail or distribution trading partner compliance programs

A few things we offer

• Compensation: $75,000 to $85,000 + Bonus potential
• Great Healthcare + Dental + Vision
• Flexible PTO
• Culture of support, encouraging Life-Work balance
• 401k match
• FSA and HSA options
• Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Parental Leave
• Hybrid work environment
• Accelerated title and salary growth potential
• A fun and energetic work environment that makes you excited to go to work every day