Principal Consultant

What You'll Do

Role Summary

The Principal Consultant is one of Avalara's most senior and impactful practitioners in the implementation discipline. This role leads our most complex and strategically significant customer engagements, defines the methodology that scales across the practice, and serves as the go-to escalation resource when the most challenging implementation scenarios arise. It is a practice-shaping role for a practitioner who takes pride in setting the standard and building the team around them.

Avalara's implementation practice sits at the intersection of tax complexity, enterprise technology, and customer outcomes. As our customer base expands in scale, global reach, and strategic importance, enterprise customers increasingly need a trusted expert who can translate sophisticated, multi-jurisdictional tax requirements into scalable implementation architectures -- someone who raises the bar not just within a single engagement, but across the entire practice.

How This Role Elevates Avalara

This role will:

• Set the standard for implementation excellence across ERP, POS, and eCommerce environments, establishing best practices and repeatable frameworks the broader team adopts.

• Elevate team capability by mentoring and developing senior and mid-level specialists, raising the quality of implementation delivery across the practice.

• Reduce delivery risk for Avalara's most strategically significant customers through direct ownership of the most complex, highest-stakes engagements.

• Drive systemic improvement by identifying patterns across customer implementations and translating them into process improvements, tooling enhancements, and scalable playbooks.

• Influence Avalara's product roadmap by representing the implementation function in cross-functional forums with Product, Engineering, and Customer Success, closing systemic delivery gaps and driving platform improvements.

• Advance Avalara's AI-first strategy by embedding AI-enabled approaches into implementation methodology, discovery, solution design, and team capability development.

What Your Responsibilities Will Be

Responsibilities

The successful candidate will:

• Architect and deliver end-to-end implementations across the full suite of supported ERP and platform integrations, including Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Stripe Invoicing, NetSuite, and QuickBooks, at the highest level of complexity and customization.

• Own a portfolio of Avalara's most strategically critical customer implementations, ensuring delivery quality that sets a benchmark for the practice.

• Design and lead discovery engagements with enterprise and global customers, synthesizing complex tax workflow requirements into tailored, scalable implementation architectures.

• Identify systemic patterns across the customer portfolio and translate them into process improvements, tooling enhancements, and scalable frameworks that benefit the entire practice.

• Influence implementation methodology by recommending enhancements to playbooks, onboarding materials, training curricula, and SOPs that govern how the team operates.

• Serve as the escalation point for unresolved implementation and support challenges, providing expert guidance to senior and junior specialists.

• Partner with Implementation leadership as a thought leader on strategy, methodology evolution, and the future direction of the implementation practice.

• Represent the implementation function in cross-functional forums with Product, Engineering, and Customer Success to influence the product roadmap and resolve systemic delivery gaps.

• Mentor and develop senior and mid-level specialists through structured coaching on implementation methodology, advanced ERP configurations, and customer engagement strategies.

• Leverage AI tools to accelerate discovery synthesis, solution design, documentation, and implementation planning across complex customer engagements.

12-Month Success Signals

Within the first 12 months, this consultant will:

• Deliver enhanced implementation playbooks, onboarding materials, and SOPs that measurably improve delivery consistency across the team.

• Successfully own and close a portfolio of Avalara's most complex and strategically significant customer implementations at or above quality benchmarks.

• Establish at least one new methodology or framework adopted as standard practice by the broader implementation team.

• Reduce escalation volume through proactive identification of systemic implementation risks and structured root-cause resolution.

• Influence at least one Product or Engineering priority through cross-functional engagement backed by implementation data and customer evidence.

• Demonstrate measurable use of AI in discovery, solution design, or documentation that improves speed, consistency, or delivery quality.

• Develop senior specialists through structured coaching, with observable improvement in methodology application and customer engagement quality.

What You'll Need to be Successful

AI Bar Raiser Expectations

At Avalara, Principal Consultants are expected to be AI Bar Raisers, leaders who improve how AI is applied across implementation methodology, discovery, solution design, and team capability development. This role shapes the standard for applied AI in implementation and elevates the AI capability of the consultants and teams around them.

The successful candidate will:

• Leverage approved AI tools to accelerate discovery synthesis, requirements documentation, solution design, and implementation planning across complex customer engagements.

• Identify opportunities where AI can improve delivery consistency, reduce manual effort, and accelerate customer time-to-value across the practice.

• Apply AI responsibly and securely, ensuring all AI-enabled approaches align with customer requirements and Avalara's governance standards.

• Demonstrate measurable improvements in implementation quality, productivity, or customer outcomes through AI-enabled approaches -- not occasional use.

• Share AI best practices, reusable prompts, and implementation patterns that elevate AI capability across the consulting and implementation teams.

Bar Raiser Expectations

At Avalara, we hire Bar Raisers, leaders who strengthen organizations through deeper expertise, stronger execution, and a lasting commitment to raising the standard for everyone around them. As a Principal Consultant, this role is expected to elevate implementation methodology, improve team capability, and drive better outcomes for Avalara's most important customers.

The successful candidate will:

• Hold themselves and the team to high standards of implementation quality, customer engagement, and delivery accountability.

• Mentor and develop senior and mid-level specialists, raising the capability of the broader team through coaching, knowledge sharing, and example.

• Identify root causes across the customer portfolio and build scalable, repeatable solutions that improve the practice for everyone.

• Exercise sound judgment when navigating complex customer requirements, competing stakeholder priorities, and technical constraints.

• Influence implementation strategy, methodology, and tooling through cross-functional engagement and data-backed recommendations.

• Leave every engagement, playbook, process, and team they touch stronger than they found it.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Information Technology, Business Administration, Accounting, Engineering, or a related discipline and 12+ years of experience in software implementation within the B2B sector, with a demonstrated track record of leading complex, multi-platform, enterprise-scale deployments.

• Recognized expert in tax automation: extensive experience independently architecting and delivering implementations of tax engines, returns, and exemption certificate systems for Avalara, TaxJar, Vertex, Sovos, Sabrix, or comparable platforms.

• Deep knowledge of sales and use tax compliance, nexus rules, and multi-jurisdictional requirements; familiarity with VAT and international tax frameworks.

• Proven expertise across ERP and platform integrations including Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, NetSuite, and QuickBooks.

• Exceptional executive presence and communication skills; demonstrated ability to navigate complex stakeholder dynamics and engage with confidence at the executive level on both customer and internal sides.

• Established track record of developing talent, formally or informally mentoring specialists and raising team-wide capability in implementation methodology and ERP configurations.

• Systems-level thinker who identifies root causes across a customer portfolio and builds scalable, repeatable solutions that benefit the entire practice.

• Demonstrated use of AI tools to materially improve implementation speed, quality, consistency, or delivery outcomes.

Avalara is an AI-first Company

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products.  Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.

• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.

• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

How We'll Take Care of You

Total Rewards 

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses. 

Health & Wellness 
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance. 

Inclusive culture and diversity 
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship. 

What You Need To Know About Avalara

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.