A solutions architect (SA) is a customer-facing technical role that designs solutions, advises customers and builds proofs of concept; whether it works before the sale, after it or both depends on the employer. As of September 2026, an AWS Solutions Architect posting sits within AWS Global Sales and lists authoring proofs of concept, while Vercel’s Solutions Architect spans both technical pre-sales and post-sales and owns proofs of concept and pilots end to end. Source 1Solutions Architect, Enterprise GreenfieldPublisherAmazon (amazon.jobs)Source typecompany job postingSource 2Solutions ArchitectPublisherVercel (Greenhouse)Source typecompany job posting The Pragmatic Engineer reported, in August 2025, that SAs at OpenAI are more like advisory roles: they rarely write code on customers’ infrastructure, and usually build MVPs or proofs of concept with anonymized or offline cuts of data. Source 8Forward Deployed Engineers (Gergely Orosz)PublisherThe Pragmatic EngineerSource typenews report Colin Jarvis, who leads forward deployed engineering at OpenAI, said on a South Park Commons panel in May 2026 that OpenAI’s unit is a business unit separate from both solutions engineering, which is pre-sales, and solutions architecture, which is post-sales. Source 3The Future of Forward Deployed Engineering | OpenAI, Ramp, Nominal, DatalandPublisherSouth Park Commons (YouTube)Source typerecorded talk or interview At OpenAI and Anthropic, postings titled Applied AI Architect cover similar ground: OpenAI’s makes the architect the technical owner for a customer portfolio from pre-sales discovery through deployment, and Anthropic’s Commercial posting calls the role a pre-sales architect paired with account executives. Source 4Applied AI ArchitectPublisherOpenAI (Ashby)Source typecompany job postingSource 5Job Application for Applied AI Architect, Commercial at AnthropicPublisherAnthropic (Greenhouse)Source typecompany job posting
Why it matters in interviews
If your background is SA work, expect “Why FDE, not solutions architect?” and have the line ready: a proof of concept shows it can work, and the FDE makes it run in the customer’s environment and answers for it afterward. Baseten’s Solutions Architect posting, as of September 2026, draws the same line when it asks for technical depth “without needing to write production code” and pulls in FDE support for deeper technical work. Source 6Solutions Architect @ BasetenPublisherBaseten (Ashby)Source typecompany job posting The line needs proof behind it. Glean’s founding FDE posting, also as of September 2026, asks for AI solutions shipped in the real world, “Not just prototypes.” Source 7Founding Forward Deployed EngineerPublisherGlean (Greenhouse job board)Source typecompany job posting Bring one story where something you built stayed running after the pilot: who was paged, what broke first, and what you changed. In system design rounds, don’t stop at an architecture diagram; a strong candidate adds who deploys it, what runs first, and how it is monitored once the customer depends on it.
The lesson FDE, software engineer, solutions architect, sales engineer: telling them apart shows the posting lines that separate the roles.