Solutions Architect

OpenRouter is the open AI routing and infrastructure layer that enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize the best large language models across providers. As a Solutions Architect, you will be the technical backbone of the sales organization, partnering with Business Development Managers and Product Managers to translate complex customer requirements into technical strategy. You will work directly with engineering, infrastructure, and platform teams at the largest prospects and customers, helping them architect, integrate, and scale their LLM usage on OpenRouter. This is a hands-on, customer-facing technical role that includes running technical discovery, leading architecture conversations, building and supporting proofs of concept, and feeding learnings back into Product and Engineering.

Responsibilities

Partner with Business Development Managers and Product Managers on strategic partnership opportunities, leading technical discovery, solution design, and architecture discussions with customer engineering and infrastructure teams; Run technical discovery with partner product and engineering teams, map their product to integration patterns, and present options with honest tradeoffs; Capture partner requirements, including launch-blocking, scale, and compliance needs, before commercial terms are agreed; Turn partner requirements into integration specs that engineering builds from; Keep a single current list of open technical questions and decisions for every active partner deal, and drive them to resolution; Stand up working integrations with design partners, debug in real time, and drive to a clear technical yes; Build reference architectures, integration guides, and demo environments; Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Customer Engineering to bring customer and market signal back into the roadmap; Stay technically current with the LLM landscape, including new models, providers, infrastructure patterns, and customer tools

Requirements

7+ years in a technical, partner- or customer-facing role (solutions architect, partner engineer, sales engineer, forward-deployed engineer) at an API-first or developer infrastructure company; Hands-on depth in API platform design: authentication and authorization (OAuth 2.0, PKCE, token exchange, API key management), multi-tenancy, rate limiting, webhooks, and usage metering; Experience designing embedded or platform integrations where account ownership, billing, and data flows were part of the design; A track record of writing technical specs that engineers actually built from; Comfortable leading a call with senior technical leaders internally and externally; Strong written communication; Genuine technical curiosity about OpenRouter and partner products and the AI tools and infrastructure ecosystem

Nice to have

Experience at an API or platform company with a partner or embed program; Familiarity with gateways and proxies, trust and safety or abuse systems, or billing and metering infrastructure; Hands-on time with LLM APIs, agents, MCP, or multi-provider routing; Personal projects involving AI agents, self-hosted models, or infrastructure tinkering