Solutions Architect, SMB (Pre-sales)
Application analysis
Solutions Architect, SMB (Pre-sales) at Stripe is a forward deployed payments infrastructure 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.
About Stripe
Stripe embeds engineers with large merchants to integrate payments, billing, and financial products. The role is anchored in Chicago, IL, so expect on-site customer work in that region.
Stand out for Solutions Architect, SMB (Pre-sales)
- Lead your application with one paragraph tying Solutions Architect, SMB (Pre-sales) to a specific customer or deployment you owned — Stripe 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; Stripe values technical judgment in customer-facing roles.
- This role is tied to Chicago, IL — mention willingness to work on-site with customers and any existing ties to that market (clients, partners, or domain knowledge).
Stand out at Stripe
- Demonstrate API design taste with a concrete example — Stripe will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Demonstrate rigor with edge cases with a concrete example — Stripe will probe for specifics, not buzzwords.
- Loops often include integration design and debugging — show you can reason about money movement, idempotency, and failure modes.
- Read recent engineering blog posts, product launches, and customer stories on stripe.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 we are
About Stripe
Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies—from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups—use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.
About the team
Stripe’s SMB Solutions Architecture (SA) team works with technical and business leaders (CTO/ CIO/ CEO/ Founders etc.), payments leaders and product engineering teams in the SMB segment to evangelize Stripe’s solutions in the market. A solutions architect’s role is to build relationships with decision makers and think strategically about the business needs of Stripe’s customers. Solution Architects identify and propose Stripe solutions to solve complex business challenges and drive growth for our customers. SMB SAs establish and prescribe best practices around a customer’s strategy, provide business and technical thought leadership and are viewed as a trusted advisor. They work on scaling business processes aligned to maximizing account coverage while working closely with customer and partner resources to deliver a solution that can be adopted quickly.
What you’ll do
As a member of the team, the Solutions Architect will build highly consultative trusted relationships with c-level executives and technical decision makers in the customer’s organization to provide business and technical thought leadership, and become a trusted advisor in solving mission-critical business challenges. She/he will architect business models with them so they can drive new monetization opportunities and growth for both the user