Solutions Architect

About OpenRouter

OpenRouter is the open AI routing and infrastructure layer that enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize the best large language models across providers—without lock-in, capacity constraints, or unnecessary cost. We power some of the most advanced AI teams in the world by giving them the flexibility to move fast, scale confidently, and stay future-proof as models evolve.

As enterprise adoption of AI accelerates, OpenRouter sits at the center of how organizations operationalize LLMs across research, product, and production workloads.

About the Role

As a Solutions Architect, you'll be the technical backbone of our sales organization — partnering with Business Development Managers and Product Managers to translate complex customer requirements into winning technical strategy.

You'll work directly with engineering, infrastructure, and platform teams at our largest prospects and customers, helping them understand how to architect, integrate, and scale their LLM usage on OpenRouter.

This is a hands-on, customer-facing technical role. You'll run technical discovery, lead architecture conversations, build and support proofs of concept, and be the trusted technical voice in complex, multi-stakeholder deals — while also feeding what you learn back into Product and Engineering to make OpenRouter better.

What You'll Do

• Own the technical side of the sales cycle. Partner with Business Development Managers and Product Managers on strategic and enterprise opportunities, leading technical discovery, solution design, and architecture discussions with customer engineering and infrastructure teams.
• Run and support proofs of concept. Scope POCs with customers, help them stand up integrations, troubleshoot issues in real time, and drive POCs to a clear technical win.
• Translate business needs into technical solutions. Understand a customer's infrastructure, model usage, and constraints, and map them to the right OpenRouter architecture, routing strategy, and deployment approach.
• Be the credible technical voice in the room. Build trust with engineers, architects, and technical decision-makers by speaking their language — on compute, networking, security, and infrastructure as well as on LLMs.
• Support deal strategy. Help Business Development Managers and Product Managersand account teams navigate technical objections, security reviews, and procurement requirements that come up in enterprise and infrastructure deals.
• Build reusable technical assets. Create demos, reference architectures, POC frameworks, and technical enablement content the broader sales team can use.
• Partner cross-functionally. Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Customer Engineering to bring customer and market signal back into the roadmap, and to make sure customer feedback shapes what we build next.
• Stay technically sharp. Keep pace with the fast-evolving LLM landscape — new models, providers, infrastructure patterns, and the tools your customers are already using.

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years in a technical, customer-facing role in B2B SaaS — as a Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, or senior technical Account Executive — with a strong track record supporting complex enterprise deals.
• Deep experience with developer-centric infrastructure: cloud, Kubernetes, virtualization, networking, storage, or open-source infrastructure platforms.
• Comfort going deep with technical stakeholders (engineers, architects, infrastructure teams) as well as business stakeholders, and the ability to move fluidly between the two.
• A track record of driving technical wins in the sales cycle — POCs, architecture reviews, security reviews — that translate into closed business.
• Strong hands-on technical curiosity: you build things, break things, and stay current because you want to, not just because the job requires it.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience operating in a fast-growing, evolving environment where product, process, and priorities shift as the company scales.

Nice to Haves

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, hardened/secure images, or private cloud infrastructure.
• Personal projects involving AI agents, self-hosted models, or infrastructure tinkering (e.g., running models or VMs on home lab hardware like a Raspberry Pi).
• Experience selling or supporting sales into healthcare, financial services, or other regulated industries.
• Experience building technical enablement or POC programs from scratch at an early-stage or high-growth company.
• Familiarity with the LLM ecosystem (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, open-source models) and multi-provider routing concepts.

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria below but still are interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we're looking for someone who is excited to join the team.