Solution Architect

At Appian, we support our federal customer’s mission by delivering solutions using our cloud-based platform technology.  Appian’s Customer Success organization works closely with our federal customers, advising and supporting them on how to architect and deliver Appian based-solutions.  To support this goal, Appian Customer Success, is looking for an Solution Architect to help us to grow our federal business and work closely with customers to design integrated solutions and make compelling offers. 

As a Solution Architect, you will be a key technical leader within Appian’s Customer Success team as well as a trusted technical advisor to Appian’s clients. In this role, you will define leading, integrated solutions that use Appian’s platform technology to support our customers unique mission areas.  You will maintain an awareness of market forces and trends, lead the design and development of innovations and offerings that address customers demands and continue to position as a leader.  You will consult and advise our customers on their programs and projects, driving quality and innovation.  The ideal candidate will combine excellent technical, product and business skills to make our customers and partners successful.  And have experience working with BPM and/or business systems.

This role is based at our HQ in McLean, VA. Appian was built on a culture of in-person collaboration, which we believe is a key driver of our mission to be the best. Employees hired for this position are expected to be in the office 4 - 5 days per week to foster that culture, ensure we thrive through shared ideas and teamwork, and maximize opportunities to connect with the exceptional people across Appian. While working in-person with customers is our main priority, we also believe the office environment enables more opportunities to celebrate wins, collaborate effectively, and build strong relationships across teams.

To be successful in this role, you will:

• Advise customers on the technical design, architecture and implementation of Appian solutions on a customer’s private cloud or on-premise hosting solution, and/or integrating Appian government cloud offerings with the customer’s infrastructure

• Support the sales cycle through the creation of high-value, differentiated solutions, based on Appian’s technology, that integrates and defines program and project management disciplines with a compelling technical solution and delivery roadmap

• Present and vet integrated solutions and complex technical concepts and designs to our customers and other audiences

• Support customers on the configuration, testing, deployment and operations of Appian applications, following agile delivery methodologies and Appian best practices

• Work with clients on all aspects of their program to drive technical success and efficiency, including advising of development practice, program management and governance and delivery automation (version control, configuration management, and other DevSecOps and Infrastructure Automation practices)

• Lead the definition and development of Appian Customer Success innovations and offerings in order to support leading Appian delivery capabilities, and bring together emerging requirements and practices from our customers and industry

• Collect and review technical challenges with a team of architects and distill into common best practices and common solutions

• Support the development and review of whitepapers and pre-sales solutioning and proposals

Basic qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field

• At least 5 years of experience advising customers on design and implementation of government cloud computing platforms, and at least 10 years of multi-tier application design and architecture

• Experience with architecting secure cloud based hosting solutions for federal customers using Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and/or Microsoft Azure.  Leadership experience designing, architecting or delivering one or more enterprise-level cloud environments (e.g. C2S, JWICS, GovCloud, etc.)

• Experience authoring federal proposals and whitepaper is required

• In depth experience, managing federal programs and projects and leading IT delivery using agile frameworks, tooling and methodologies, including Scrum and SAFe

• Experience accelerating IT solution under the federal government’s Risk Management Framework is preferred

• Experience with designing and implementing DevSecOps pipelines and Infrastructure Automation frameworks, using toolsets like Jenkins, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack, Cucumber, JMeter, and Fitnesse, preferred 

• Willingness to travel; 10-15% to support customer engagements including SCIF’s

Other Skills:

• Strong communication and presentation skills

• Guiding client enterprise architecture teams as needed during the design and implementation of scalable solutions

• Excellent problem solving skills and talent for identifying creative solutions

• Ability to identify and lead the creation of market offerings, and lead the formulation of corporate capabilities and intellectual property

Education and Certifications:

• AWS, Google, or Azure Certifications is a plus

• Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, preferred

• Certified Scrum Master or other agile certifications, required

Clearance: 

• Possession of or ability to obtain a US government public trust and/or  DoD clearance.  TS/SCI with CI Poly strongly preferred

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