Director, Solutions Strategy

As Director, Solutions Strategy, you are the person who turns a client's business problem into a credible, buildable solution - and then makes sure that solution holds up through delivery.

You operate in two directions at once. Facing outward, you shape technology solutions for new opportunities: leading discovery, supporting the definition of scope and shape, assessing vendors and partners, and presenting recommendations and trade-offs to client stakeholders. Facing inward, you raise the quality of how Apply solutions as a whole: the approaches we reuse, the estimating models we trust, and the strategists and technologists who learn the craft from you.

You are a senior practitioner and a mentor. Your influence comes from the quality of your thinking, the trust you build with client technology leadership, and the strategists, architects, and Technology Directors who are better because they worked alongside you.

The role at a glance: provide technology recommendations that balance client expectations, strategic vision, customer experience, and engineering excellence.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Solution Strategy & Pre-Sales

• Design enterprise-grade technology solutions for new initiatives and business opportunities.

• Define solution scope, capacity, and high-level estimates in collaboration with Product, Design, Engineering, Data, and other relevant disciplines and teams.

• Present and articulate technology solutions, trade-offs, and recommendations to client stakeholders - including where we recommend against something.

• Lead technology and vendor assessments, and act as a key voice in buy-vs.-build decisions.

• Engage the technology partner ecosystem when defining solutions, bringing partner capability to bear on the client's actual problem rather than the reverse.

• Ensure proposed solutions balance business objectives, technical feasibility, scalability, delivery realities, and long-term client strategy.

• Contribute materially to pipeline quality and win rate on the opportunities you shape.

Client & Technology Leadership

• Own and develop relationships with the client's technology leadership and management teams as a trusted advisor.

• Understand the client's business and technology landscape well enough to identify credible opportunities for growth and expansion within existing accounts.

• Be accountable for the overall direction and coherence of the Technology and Strategy work within your engagements.

• Provide strategic direction to project delivery teams, and collaborate with other Senior Leaders across engagements.

• Act as a key member of the account team alongside leaders from other disciplines.

• Connect technology strategy, delivery execution, and account growth into long-term client partnerships.

Craft & Capability

• Own and evolve how Apply approaches solutioning: reusable solution patterns, estimating and scoping models, assessment frameworks, and the standard of quality we hold proposals to.

• Raise the floor on solution quality across engagements you are not personally staffed on, through review, guidance, and shared standards.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

Experience

• At least 10 years working in and around enterprise IT environments.

• A blend of consulting and enterprise-side experience.

• Substantial client-facing experience, including gaining the confidence of senior stakeholders.

• A track record on complex solutions involving multiple systems, vendors, and stakeholders.

• Experience mentoring senior technologists and strategists, and influencing teams you do not manage.

Technical breadth

• A genuine technologist - strong understanding of web, mobile, and cloud technologies. A jack of all trades.

• Cloud and DevOps (AWS, Azure, GCP) - you have architected cloud solutions, or worked closely on projects deployed to the cloud.

• Data storage and transformation (RDBMS, NoSQL, big data / warehousing).

• API standards and integration patterns (REST, GraphQL).

• Familiarity with UX and single-page application frameworks.

• Familiarity with MACH architecture and the broader evolution of enterprise systems - including 'monolith to composable' thinking and the realities of getting there.

• Strong understanding of headless and service-oriented platforms.

• Wide exposure across the digital ecosystem: CMS, commerce and loyalty, CRM, marketing automation, personalization and testing, search and SEO, content marketing, social, mobile.

• Understanding of the regulatory and compliance requirements of enterprise solutions.

• Exposure to service design and business design practices.

• An appreciation of how upstream strategy and downstream enablement depend on each other.

How you work

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills - you can distill messy information into a thoughtful, defensible recommendation.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to make complex technical concepts legible to a non-technical audience.

• Strong presentation and public speaking skills.

• The ability to align and influence critical stakeholders without positional authority.

• Comfort with ambiguity, and the judgment to know when to resolve it and when to name it.

• Ability to travel as needed for client meetings and business development.