Solutions Architect - Public Sector
$315k+Application analysis
Solutions Architect - Public Sector at Cohere is a forward deployed ai company role for engineers who want customer-facing technical work with real deployment ownership.
Reading this role
This Solutions / Sales Engineering role centers on technical discovery, demos, POCs, and helping buyers build internal consensus. Key signals from the listing: Kubernetes / containers, AWS, Azure, Python.
About Cohere
This company is building AI products where forward deployed engineers translate capabilities into customer outcomes quickly. The role is anchored in Ottawa, so expect on-site customer work in that region.
Signals in the listing
Stand out for Solutions Architect - Public Sector
- Lead your application with one paragraph tying Solutions Architect - Public Sector to a specific customer or deployment you owned — Cohere hires for shipped outcomes, not tool lists.
- Bring a tight demo narrative: customer pain, live workflow, and measurable before/after — treat the interview like a compressed POC.
- Show how you qualify opportunities and say no to bad-fit pilots; Cohere values technical judgment in customer-facing roles.
- For Kubernetes-heavy roles, describe a cluster you operated: upgrades, networking, secrets, observability, and how you debugged a production outage.
- This role is tied to Ottawa — mention willingness to work on-site with customers and any existing ties to that market (clients, partners, or domain knowledge).
- Compensation is in a senior band — emphasize staff-level scope: cross-team influence, architecture decisions, and customer exec communication.
Stand out at Cohere
- Demonstrate rapid prototyping with a concrete example — Cohere will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Demonstrate customer discovery with a concrete example — Cohere will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Expect questions about real deployments, safety tradeoffs, and how you partner with customers on week one.
- Read recent engineering blog posts, product launches, and customer stories on cohere.com — reference one explicitly in your outreach to show genuine interest.
Tailored from this listing’s title, company, and description. Always verify requirements on the company careers page before applying.
Role description
Who are we? Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation AI models and end-to-end products that are designed to solve real-world business problems. We’re training and deploying frontier models for enterprises who are building AI systems. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI and we are looking for folks that want to be part of that. We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are all passionate about their craft. We are a global technology company co-headquartered in Toronto and San Francisco, with key offices in London, New York City, Montreal, Seoul, Germany and Paris. Join us! Why this role? In this role as a Solutions Architect at Cohere, you will play a significant role in growing Cohere’s Defence and National Security business. In this dynamic role, you will need to be both a strategic thinker and a hands-on doer. You will take a hands-on approach to building customer demos and proof of concepts that showcase the business value of our platform. As the technical relationship owner, you will collaborate with stakeholders to understand their business objectives and translate those into technical solutions. You will take ownership of the customer narrative, serving as the voice of the customer and acting as a liaison between the customer and our product team. Additionally, you will provide guidance on best practices for using Cohere, identify areas for improvement within the platform, and cultivate technical champions within customer organizations to drive adoption and gather feedback to enhance our products. In this role, you will:
- Develop and deliver cutting-edge agentic AI solutions utilizing Cohere’s foundation models and Agentic AI Foundry - North.
- Architect scalable, secure, and customizable NLP and generative AI solutions tailored to enterprise customer needs.
- Collaborate with customers to understand complex workflows, design pilots, and translate business
requirements into technical solutions encompassing model fine-tuning, custom agents, and agent orchestration.
- Support deployment and integration of large language models (LLMs) and custom solutions into production environments using Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud infrastructures, ensuring high performance and security.
- Lead technical engagements, including deep dives into AI architectures, workshop facilitation, and establishing best practices for agent-based AI systems and model customization.
- Work with product development to provide customer feedback on agentic AI capabilities, contribute to product enhancements, and help shape future features.
This career opportunity may be a good match for you if you possess:
- 5+ years of experience in AI/ML solution architecture, with demonstrated expertise in agentic AI, model customization, and deploying tailored AI models in enterprise contexts.
- Strong hands-on skills with Python, Jupyter Notebooks, and cloud-native deployment frameworks such as Kubernetes, Docker, Cloud managed AI services like AWS Sagemaker, Bedrock, or Azure AI Foundry or Google Vertex AI.
- Experience in designing and deploying “agentified” AI workflows, that involve multiple interconnected models or agents, to solve business challenges.
- Hands-on experience building on agent orchestration frameworks like Cohere North and deploying custom agents to production.
- Familiarity with model fine-tuning methodologies, and the development of AI agents optimized for specific workflows and enterprise needs.
- In-depth understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, and operational considerations of generative LLMs, with experience in customizing and orchestrating these models.
- Excellent communication skills to articulate complex AI architectures to both technical stakeholders and executive audiences.
- Nice to have: Background in building and managing scalable AI/ML ecosystems, with knowledge of multi-cloud deployment strategies.
- Nice to have: Familiarity with security standards for deploying agent-based AI solutions, including data privacy, model safety, and access controls.
- Nice to have: Experience working in a startup-like context.
Cohere is committed to fair and transparent pay practices. The salary range listed for this role reflects the expected base compensation. Actual compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, level, job-related knowledge, skills, education, and experience. For candidates in Ottawa, the Compensation Range is: 265,000 - 315,000
How And Where We Work:
- Cohere is remote-friendly. We have offices in Toronto, San Francisco, New York City, London, Paris, Montreal, and more coming soon.
- For those in the office: a daily lunch program, plenty of snacks, and regular community and social events.
- For those not near an office: a co-working benefit so you can work alongside others in your city.
If any of the above doesn’t line up exactly with your experience, we still encourage you to apply. We strive to create an inclusive work environment for all; we welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are committed to providing equal opportunities. Should you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please submit an Accommodations Request Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12a6IrLdF3kI2nonKSr4tiFuz18rLQbaeYV-JM9L4o9Q/edit, and we will work together to meet your needs. We may use AI-enabled tools to screen and assess applicants against the criteria for this position. This helps our recruiters identify potentially qualified candidates, but it doesn't limit the applications our recruiters may review or consider.