Solutions Architect/Presales Engineer

Open for - Bay Area only

Role Overview:
The Senior Solution Engineer will serve as a trusted technical advisor to enterprise customers, bridging deep technical expertise with strong presentation and communication skills. The role involves working closely with customers’ technical and executive teams (CIO, CTO, CISO) to design, present, and implement secure container and cloud-native solutions built around CleanStart’s product suite.
Key Responsibilities:
• Act as the lead technical expert during customer engagements, providing architecture recommendations and implementation guidance for Kubernetes, container, and CI/CD environments.
• Deliver solution presentations, demos, and PoCs to C-level audiences and technical teams alike.
• Collaborate with account teams to assess customer requirements and design customized solutions aligned with business and security objectives.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and deployment guides.
• Conduct workshops and speaker sessions to evangelize container security best practices and CleanStart differentiators.
• Partner with product management and engineering teams to provide customer feedback and influence product roadmap.
• Assist with RFP/RFI responses and technical evaluations during enterprise procurement cycles.
• Develop repeatable solution architectures and reference implementations for customer success.

Required Skills and Experience:
• Minimum 8 years of experience in cloud-native or distributed systems domains.
• Strong hands-on expertise with Kubernetes, Docker, containers, and microservices-based architectures.
• Deep understanding of DevOps tools and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, ArgoCD, etc.).
• Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, and hybrid/multi-cloud deployment patterns.

• Solid understanding of software supply chain security, image hardening, and vulnerability management.
• Proven pre-sales, customer-facing, or solution architecture experience interacting with senior enterprise stakeholders (CIO/CTO/CISO level).
• Excellent communication and presentation skills—able to simplify and articulate complex technology concepts.
• Strong documentation and technical writing ability.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; advanced degree preferred.
• Kubernetes certification (CKA/CKAD/CKS) or comparable credentials is an advantage.

CleanStart is revolutionizing software supply chain security through our advanced vulnerability database platform and CleanStart product line. We provide hardened, vulnerability-free container images with built-in security, compliance, and performance benefits. Our mission is to transform container security by eliminating pre-existing vulnerabilities and providing full visibility and control over the software supply chain.