Principal, Solutions Architect

Your Future Evolves Here

Principal Product Solutions Architect, Specialty Product Management

Role Overview

The Principal Product Solutions Architect is a Director-level individual contributor responsible for bringing senior product judgment into customer solutioning before commitments are made. This role ensures Evolent’s specialty solutions are product-coherent, commercially sound, and operationally sustainable from early customer engagement through delivery transition.

This role exists to solve a critical business problem: preventing non-standard customer commitments, custom solutioning, and under-scoped deal structures from creating downstream burden on Product, Engineering, Operations, and Delivery.

Operating at the intersection of Product, Strategic Accounts, Sales, and Delivery, this leader ensures solution decisions are anchored in product strategy, platform intent, workflow standards, and economic reality, not just short-term deal momentum.

While this role will be customer-facing and deeply engaged in commercial discussions, it is not a sales engineering role and not a custom solution design role. It is a product-led governance role with explicit accountability to:

• protect product and platform integrity

• distinguish standard capability from true customization

• make tradeoffs visible before commitments are made

• surface delivery, pricing, and roadmap implications early

• reduce downstream rework, escalation, and avoidable complexity

The Principal Product Solutions Architect is accountable for improving the quality of solution decisions upstream, especially in complex, high-stakes, or strategically ambiguous opportunities.

Core Responsibilities

Product-Led Solution Governance

Serve as the senior product authority in pre-commitment solution shaping, ensuring proposed customer solutions:

• align to product strategy and roadmap direction

• reflect standardized, productized workflows wherever possible

• stay within supported product and configuration boundaries

• make tradeoffs explicit across customer value, product integrity, delivery feasibility, and long-term scalability

Apply strong product judgment to distinguish clearly between:

• core product capabilities

• supported configuration patterns

• custom requests that create new product, engineering, or operational burden

• exceptions that may be justified strategically but require explicit decision-making and cost visibility

Drive higher decision quality in commercial and early discovery contexts, even when not the final decision-maker.

This role is measured by the soundness of upstream solution decisions and the reduction of downstream complexity, not by volume of deals supported.

Commercial Guardrails and Deal Integrity

Partner with Strategic Accounts, Sales, and Product leaders to ensure customer commitments are grounded in a realistic understanding of:

• what the product does today

• what can be configured within standard patterns

• what requires non-standard customization

• what creates incremental implementation, engineering, support, or roadmap burden

Make the commercial implications of solution choices visible early, including:

• custom work that should be reflected in deal structure or pricing

• customer-specific asks that do not create reusable value for the broader portfolio

• commitments that imply roadmap changes, technical debt, or operational lift

• strategic exceptions that require deliberate executive review

Actively challenge, redirect, or escalate solution proposals that create material risk to platform health, delivery success, pricing integrity, or future roadmap flexibility.

Help ensure that Evolent does not absorb hidden product and engineering cost through poorly structured or under-scoped commercial commitments.

Portfolio and Workflow Coherence

Own the coherent representation of Evolent’s specialty product ecosystem across specialty products, ensuring solutions are positioned as an integrated portfolio rather than a collection of one-off offers.

Maintain and evolve canonical end-to-end workflow models spanning:

• intake

• clinical review

• decisioning

• correspondence

• downstream operational execution

Ensure workflows presented internally and externally are:

• operationally accurate

• consistent where product intent is shared

• explicit where variation is intentional and justified

• usable as a basis for solutioning, scoping, and implementation planning

Surface second-order and downstream impacts of solution decisions across delivery, operations, support, and future product flexibility.

Early Discovery and Product-to-Delivery Continuity

Engage early in customer discovery and solution shaping to ensure opportunities stay aligned to:

• product intent

• known workflow standards

• feasible delivery models

• realistic configuration and implementation boundaries

Provide continuity from pre-sales through transition by documenting and communicating:

• original product assumptions

• agreed scope boundaries

• known risks and tradeoffs

• any strategic exceptions or non-standard commitments

Serve as a key bridge between Product, Sales, Strategic Accounts, and Delivery to reduce downstream rework, scope confusion, and execution escalations.

Strategic Exception Management

Establish and apply clear decision frameworks for when customer-specific solutioning should be:

• absorbed into standard product patterns

• delivered through supported configuration

• priced and scoped as custom work

• declined or escalated as misaligned to strategy

Partner with Product and Commercial leadership to ensure exceptions are evaluated not only on revenue opportunity, but also on:

• reuse potential across customers

• delivery complexity

• engineering burden

• support burden

• time-to-value

• impact on product roadmap and platform sustainability

Help create greater organizational clarity on where Evolent should flex for strategic advantage and where it should hold the line.

Organizational Leverage and Product Maturity

Raise solution quality and product maturity across the organization by:

• modeling strong product judgment and tradeoff thinking

• creating reusable solution patterns and decision frameworks

• improving clarity on product boundaries, configuration standards, and workflow intent

• informally mentoring Product Managers and commercial partners on product-led solutioning

Support the evolution of a more disciplined, product-led commercial model where customer solutioning strengthens the portfolio rather than fragmenting it.

Success Measures

Success in this role will be measured by outcomes such as:

• reduction in non-standard or under-scoped customer commitments

• improved clarity on standard vs configurable vs custom solution patterns

• better pricing and deal structuring for custom work

• fewer downstream delivery escalations and scope disputes

• reduced avoidable burden on Product and Engineering caused by pre-sale decisions

• stronger reuse of productized workflows and solution patterns

• improved alignment between commercial commitments and roadmap/platform strategy

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Computer Science, Healthcare Administration, or a related field; advanced degree preferred

• 10+ years of experience in Product Management, Solution Architecture, Product Strategy, Implementation Strategy, or related roles in a complex technology environment

• Significant experience operating in pre-sales, commercial shaping, or strategic discovery contexts while representing product and platform interests

• Deep understanding of how customer commitments translate into product, engineering, implementation, and support burden

• Proven ability to evaluate solution tradeoffs through a product, operational, technical, and commercial lens

• Strong executive presence and the ability to influence senior leaders across Product, Sales, Strategic Accounts, Delivery, and Engineering

• Demonstrated ability to challenge proposed approaches constructively and drive clarity in ambiguous, high-stakes situations

• Experience building reusable workflow models, solution standards, and decision frameworks

• Strong understanding of healthcare technology, workflow complexity, and regulated operating environments preferred

• Experience in specialty benefits management, utilization management, clinical workflows, or payer/provider technology strongly preferred

To ensure a secure hiring process we have implemented several identity verification steps, including submission of a government issued photo ID. We conduct identity verification during interviews, and final interviews may require onsite attendance. All candidates must complete a comprehensive background check, in-person I-9 verification, and may be subject to drug screening prior to employment. The use of artificial intelligence tools during interviews is prohibited and monitored. Misrepresentation will result in immediate disqualification from consideration.

Technical Requirements:

We require that all employees have the following technical capability at their home: High speed internet over 10 Mbps and, specifically for all call center employees, the ability to plug in directly to the home internet router.

Evolent is an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or disability status. If you need reasonable accommodation to access the information provided on this website, please contact recruitingteam@evolent.com for further assistance.

The expected base salary/wage range for this position is $130,000 - 150,000. As part of our total compensation package, Evolent is proud to offer comprehensive benefits (including health insurance benefits) to qualifying employees. All compensation determinations are based on the skills and experience required for the position and commensurate with experience of selected individuals, which may vary above and below the stated amounts.