AI Solutions Architect
Own the technical side of every deal: pilot deployments, integration into customer AI stacks, and turning findings into clear readouts. You'll sit between engineering and the customer from first call through production.
The role
The security, data, and AI teams we sell to need evidence before they connect AI to sensitive data. You'll produce it. You'll scope pilots, get Hardshell running inside customer environments, and walk their teams through what we found and what to do about it. This is one of our first customer-facing technical roles, and it will shape how every pilot runs from here.
What you'll do
- Run technical discovery with prospects: map their AI knowledge bases, retrieval architecture, data sources, and permission models, and scope what a pilot needs to prove.
- Deliver demonstrations built around the customer's own use cases.
- Lead pilot deployments in customer environments from first integration through the final readout. We aim for first integration in under 24 hours.
- Turn exposure-test findings and telemetry into readouts for security, data, and compliance leaders, mapped to MITRE ATLAS and the frameworks they already report against.
- Own the technical side of conversion, including production architecture, security reviews and questionnaires, and handoff to production.
- Bring what you learn in the field back to engineering and product, in writing, with enough detail to act on.
What you bring
- 5+ years in solutions architecture, solutions engineering, sales engineering, or forward-deployed engineering, ideally for security, data, or AI infrastructure products.
- Hands-on experience with enterprise AI deployments such as RAG pipelines, vector databases, LLM APIs, or AI assistants connected to company data.
- Working knowledge of cloud environments, identity and access management, and how enterprises govern sensitive data.
- Enough coding ability to get an integration working yourself, in Python or a similar language.
- Clear communication with both engineers and executives, and comfort owning a customer relationship.
- U.S. citizenship.
Nice to have
- Experience with customers in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, or with federal customers.
- Familiarity with MITRE ATLAS, the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, or the NIST AI RMF.
- An active security clearance.
The details
- Location: Hybrid in Charlottesville, VA, or remote on Eastern Time.
- Compensation: Up to $160K base salary, plus equity and health coverage.
- Travel: Occasional travel to customer sites during pilots.
- Eligibility: U.S. citizenship is required for this role because of our federal work.
About Hardshell
Hardshell secures the data layer of enterprise AI. Our platform measures what an AI deployment can leak, catches extraction from AI knowledge bases as it happens, and hardens sensitive data before any model touches it. It is model-agnostic and runs in the customer's environment, so sensitive data stays where it lives.
We're a seed-stage team headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our founders come from national security AI and cyber operations: our CTO spent five years advising the Department of Defense on AI security at the Joint AI Center and the CDAO, and our CEO served as an Army Cyber officer with assignments across U.S. Cyber Command and USSOCOM. We work with commercial customers in regulated industries and with federal and national security partners.
How to apply
Apply through the form on our careers page with your resume and LinkedIn profile. If more than one role fits, apply to the closest and say so in your note. Questions can go to careers@hardshell.ai.