The posting
About Volantio
Volantio partners with airlines worldwide to unlock hidden revenue and create better travel experiences through our post-booking optimization platform. We're a small but mighty engineering-driven company, trusted by carriers like Alaska, Air Canada, Qantas, Southwest, and more.
Our platform, Vector, is an AI-enabled post-booking optimization system built on a layered architecture: predictive models that identify opportunity, a deterministic rules engine that guarantees safe execution, and AI-assisted configuration that lets airline teams author and adapt optimization agents without code. Vector sits on top of proven modules that airlines have run in production for years.
We integrate deeply with the systems airlines actually run: exclusive PSS partnerships with Amadeus, Sabre, and Navitaire; cloud-native infrastructure on AWS; and a security posture backed by SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 certifications.
The Role
We're looking for a Solutions Architect to own the technical dimension of how Volantio wins, lands, and grows airline deployments. You'll take full responsibility for the technical side of deal progression - from qualification through closure to expansion - as the technical authority in the room during evaluations, RFPs, and contract discussions, and the person who designs how Vector actually integrates into each airline's environment before deployment work begins.
This is a role for someone who can hold two things at once: the credibility to say "yes, and here's exactly how" when our platform fits, and the discipline to say "no, and here's why" when a request would stretch us past what we can deliver reliably. Airlines are demanding, technically heterogeneous customers. You'll be the reason our commitments are precise.
This is a hands-on role, not a slideware role. You'll bridge the gap between compelling AI demos and production-grade commitments - building the demo environments, agent templates, and reference architectures that make our technical story repeatable, and grounding every claim in what the platform verifiably does.
You'll sit within engineering and work daily with commercial and customer success - owning the handoff from "deal" to "deployment design" so that what sales promises and what engineering builds are always the same thing.
What You'll Do
Win - technical ownership of deal progression
- Take full responsibility for the technical aspects of every active deal, from qualification to closure: discovery, capability mapping, demos, proofs of concept, objection handling, and technical validation.
- Own technical responses to airline RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires - mapping requirements to real platform capability with precision, and clearly flagging gaps rather than papering over them.
- Anchor security and compliance responses to our certifications (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001) and real controls, working with engineering to close genuine gaps when a customer requirement exposes one.
- Maintain the technical record on every opportunity in our CRM - use case, success criteria, technical close status, open risks - so the pipeline reflects deal reality, not optimism.
Land - deployment architecture and precise commitments
- Design deployment and integration architectures for new airline customers: PSS integration paths (Amadeus, Sabre, Navitaire), data feeds, DNS and domain configurations, identity, and network patterns that fit each carrier's IT constraints.
- Serve as the technical counterpart to airline IT, security, and architecture teams - negotiating workable patterns when a customer's standard approach and ours don't align.
- Author the technical schedules of SOWs and review contracts for capability gaps and non-functional commitments (SLAs, RPO/RTO, throughput ceilings) before signature. No schedule ships blank, and no NFR ships unexamined.
- Own technical scoping authority for customer commitments: no technical work is promised to a customer without your review. You are the control point between commercial enthusiasm and engineering reality.
Grow - adoption, expansion, and reusable assets
- Build technical champions inside customer accounts and own the technical path up the adoption ladder - from a first use case deployment to full Vector adoption - grounded in honest ceiling analysis, not storytelling. We set expectations we can beat.
- Build and maintain the assets that make our technical story repeatable: demo environments, Vector agent templates, reference architectures, and workshop materials the whole commercial team can run with.
- Codify repeating patterns: when three airlines raise the same objection, you turn the negotiated resolution into a reusable reference architecture instead of solving it a fourth time.
- Serve as the structured voice of the customer into product and engineering - feeding field requirements, competitive intelligence, and gap analysis into the roadmap with evidence attached.
What We're Looking For
- 6-10 years in software engineering, solutions architecture, sales engineering, or technical consulting - with real engineering depth. You can read an API spec, debug an integration, and build a working demo yourself.
- Experience designing or deploying integrations with large enterprise IT environments: APIs, data pipelines, DNS/networking, SSO/identity, cloud architecture (AWS preferred).
- Full pre-sales lifecycle experience: use case discovery, solution scoping, and delivering architecture designs to audiences ranging from airline engineers to C-level executives - context-switching in technical depth as the room requires.
- Fluency in the language of enterprise procurement: RFPs, SOWs, security questionnaires, NFRs, and the ability to read a contract schedule and find the commitment that will hurt.
- Demonstrated ability to defend a capability boundary with evidence - you can tell a customer "no" in a way that preserves the relationship because your reasoning is verifiable.
- Strong written communication: your RFP responses, architecture docs, and SOW schedules will be read by airline CIOs and our own leadership. Precision matters.
- Comfort operating between commercial and engineering without being captured by either - pragmatic, direct, and allergic to hand-waving.
- Disciplined about process hygiene: you keep the technical record current because you know decisions get made from it.
- Ability to work across time zones with airline customers in North America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe.
Bonus Points
- Airline or travel technology background, especially PSS-adjacent (Amadeus, Sabre, Navitaire) or revenue management systems.
- Experience with security compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, SOC 2) from the vendor side.
- Experience productionizing or evaluating ML/AI systems - and the judgment to explain what AI-enabled software can and cannot promise. You know the difference between an impressive demo and a production commitment.
- Prior work in a forward-deployed, sales engineering, or field CTO capacity at an enterprise SaaS company.
Why Volantio
- Be the technical authority in deals with some of the world's largest airlines - your judgment directly shapes what we commit to and what we build.
- Work on a genuinely differentiated platform: AI-enabled optimization with deterministic guarantees, deployed in production at global carriers.
- Small team, direct access to leadership, no layers between your recommendation and the decision.
- Define a function, not fill a seat: you'll build the reference architectures, scoping discipline, and pre-sales machinery that scale with the company.
