Senior Architect Manager

Senior Solutions Architect, Marketing & Sales Operations

Q-Free is a global leader in intelligent transportation systems, spearheading innovative solutions for tolling, traffic management, and active transportation. Embracing innovation and harnessing the power of technology, we address daily mobility challenges, shaping a future where people, goods, and data travel safely, efficiently, and sustainably. With a four-decade legacy, Q-Free’s vision extends beyond geographical boundaries, serving customers worldwide in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. To learn more about how Q-Free is shaping the future of intelligent transportation, visit www.q-free.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.

Responsibilities/Authority:

The Senior Solutions Architect leads the technical sales function for Tolling, including direct oversight of Solutions Architects and technical pre-sales resources, the end-to-end technical sales process, solution development, technical estimates, and sales-to-operations handoff. This role is accountable for ensuring the technical sales team delivers consistent, high-quality support across global opportunities, translates customer needs into practical and scalable architectures, develops reliable technical assumptions and estimates, and partners closely with Sales, Product, Engineering, Operations, and Delivery to support revenue growth and successful project execution.

The role serves as the leader and escalation point for technical sales engagements, providing structure, governance, and quality control from early opportunity qualification through proposal, estimate review, contract award, and formal transition to Operations and Delivery.

Most important work tasks:

Pre-Sales & Solution Strategy

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, manage, coach, and develop the Technical Sales team, including Solutions Architects and technical pre-sales resources, to ensure consistent execution, strong solution quality, effective customer engagement, and alignment with sales priorities.
• Own and coordinate technical sales team priorities, resource assignments, workload balancing, and response quality across sales opportunities, proposals, demonstrations, technical reviews, and customer engagements.
• Establish, manage, and continuously improve standards, tools, templates, and governance for the technical sales process, including discovery, qualification support, solution design, architecture documentation, demonstrations, technical estimates, risk review, and sales-to-operations handoff.
• Provide performance feedback, mentoring, and development support to strengthen technical, commercial, and client-facing capabilities across the team.
• Monitor team performance, pipeline coverage, estimate readiness, handoff quality, response accuracy, and technical sales capacity to ensure the team can effectively support revenue goals and strategic pursuits.
• Partner with Sales leadership to support opportunity qualification and technical sales strategies across priority pursuits and target accounts.
• Participate in and help coordinate discovery sessions to understand client needs, challenges, business drivers, and decision criteria.
• Oversee the technical sales process from opportunity qualification through proposal development, solution validation, technical estimate development, internal review, risk assessment, award transition, and sales-to-operations handoff.
• Guide the development of tailored solution architectures and value propositions aligned to customer outcomes and Q-Free’s commercial strategy.
• Support technical contributions to RFP/RFI responses, helping ensure solution content, architectures, assumptions, and differentiators are clear, accurate, and compelling.
• Implement repeatable checkpoints, approval standards, documentation expectations, and quality controls that improve technical sales consistency, proposal quality, estimate reliability, and solution risk awareness.

Client Engagement & Technical Sales

• Serve as a senior technical resource in strategic client meetings, executive presentations, and solution workshops.
• Support and deliver solution demonstrations, technical briefings, and executive-level solution narratives as needed.
• Help align technical sales engagements with opportunity stage, customer decision criteria, competitive positioning, and expected commercial outcomes,
• Articulate the value of multi-lane free flow, back office and vehicle identification solutions
• Translate complex ITS, Tolling and technical concepts into clear, business-focused messaging

Solution Design & Architecture

• Guide and review end-to-end solutions including Multi-Lane Free-Flow (MLFF) tolling solutions, including Roadside, Operational, and Commercial Back-Office systems.
• Review architecture diagrams, system workflows, technical assumptions, and integration strategies for alignment with internal standards and customer expectations.
• Align solutions with customer environments, legacy systems, and operational constraints

Commercial & Proposal Support

• Lead cross-functional technical estimate development with Sales, Product, Engineering, Operations, and Delivery, ensuring solution scope, assumptions, delivery approach, resource needs, dependencies, exclusions, and implementation considerations are clearly defined and reviewed.
• Support pricing and commercial strategies by aligning technical solutions with cost drivers, delivery complexity, and customer value.
• Own the review and quality of technical estimates for proposals, statements of work, change requests, and strategic opportunities, including validation of assumptions, risks, dependencies, exclusions, level of effort, resource requirements, and potential delivery impacts.
• Partner with Sales leadership by providing technical input for forecasting, deal strategy, pursuit prioritization, and go/no-go discussions.
• Contribute to proposal development, solution narratives, and statements of work
• Identify risks and dependencies that impact delivery, cost, or timeline
  

Sales-to-Operations Handoff & Technical Leadership

• Own and manage the sales-to-operations handoff process for awarded opportunities, ensuring Operations and Delivery receive complete, accurate, and actionable documentation covering solution design, scope, technical estimates, assumptions, risks, dependencies, acceptance criteria, customer commitments, and open items.
• Provide technical support during project kickoff and early implementation phases, including escalation support where needed.
• Facilitate knowledge transfer between Sales, Technical Sales, Operations, and Delivery teams to maintain alignment between proposed and delivered solutions and reduce execution risk after contract award.
• Maintain alignment between proposed and delivered solutions
• Lead post-award lessons learned by reviewing estimate variances, handoff effectiveness, solution gaps, delivery issues, and process improvements to strengthen future technical sales execution.

Market Insight & Innovation

• Provide feedback to Product and Engineering on market trends, customer needs, technical gaps, competitive positioning, and repeatable solution opportunities
• Stay current on advancements in Tolling, smart mobility, and traffic technologies
• Support development of repeatable solutions, demos, and sales assets
• Support sales enablement materials, technical playbooks, qualification guides, estimate assumptions, and reusable solution content that improve sales effectiveness and scalability.

Experience and Competencies:

• Demonstrated experience leading, managing, coaching, and developing technical pre-sales, solutions architecture, sales engineering, or technical sales teams
• Strong pre-sales strategy, technical consulting, opportunity qualification, technical sales process ownership, and cross-functional pursuit leadership experience
• Tolling and ITS systems knowledge
• Ability to influence buying decisions through technical expertise
• Strong communication, presentation, and client engagement skills
• Ability to help set direction, prioritize resources, support escalations, and collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders
• Ability to manage technical sales processes and promote consistency across opportunity qualification, discovery, solution development, proposal support, technical estimates, risk review, approval checkpoints, and sales-to-operations handoff activities
• Strong technical estimating capability, including the ability to validate level of effort, assumptions, dependencies, exclusions, risks, resource requirements, and delivery impacts for complex technical solutions

Qualifications:

• 8+ years in solutions architecture, sales engineering, technical pre-sales, technical sales leadership, or related technical consulting roles, including experience managing or leading technical sales teams, resources, or major solution initiatives
• Experience in Tolling, transportation technology, or smart mobility
• Proven success supporting complex, consultative sales cycles
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams through proposal, solution design, and customer engagement processes
• Experience owning or overseeing technical sales teams, pre-sales workflows, technical estimate development and review, proposal support, risk identification, and sales-to-operations or sales-to-delivery handoff processes

Education Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Transportation Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience)