Associate Principal Solutions Architect, Tekion
$244-366k
+ Stock Options
More information about location
Office located in Pleasanton, CA
End-to-end cloud native automotive platform
Job no longer available
End-to-end cloud native automotive platform
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$244-366k
+ Stock Options
More information about location
Office located in Pleasanton, CA
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build the world's best business applications in the cloud.
Role
Who you are
- At least 8 years in solutions architecture, pre-sales, or lead technical/product roles, with significant experience in digital automotive retail (B2B preferred)
- Strong track record in automotive and financial services domain areas such as desking, F&I, credit, DMS integrations, menu selling, and OEM/Dealer collaboration
- Experience with SaaS or ERP solutions for supply chain, inventory, logistics, or automotive retail
- Strong understanding of fixed operations (service, parts, repair) is highly preferred
- Demonstrated ability to scope projects, lead technical planning, estimate effort, and resolve technical challenges
- Hands-on experience with digital retail, lending, forms, digital document management, CRM, desking, and online retail workflows
- Proficiency with APIs and integration tools (e.g., Postman), and documentation best practices (Confluence, Jira)
- Excellent interpersonal, communication, and stakeholder management skills, including executive-level engagement and technical negotiations
- Proven experience delivering multi-stakeholder projects through collaborative, cross-functional teamwork
What the job involves
- The Associate Principal Solutions Architect drives the adoption and delivery of Tekion's digital platform for OEM's, dealers, and technology partners
- This role blends deep automotive domain knowledge, advanced technical skills, and strategic business acumen. The ideal candidate builds across stakeholders to deliver seamless, integrated solutions that enable the future of automotive retail
- Apply deep automotive retail and financial services domain expertise, demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of vehicle desking, menu selling, lending and financing processes, and integration with third-party systems including F&I, Credit, and external DMS. Experience with service, parts, and repair (Fixed Operations) processes is a strong plus
- Serve as a critical business translator between OEM partners and Tekion’s product/engineering teams. Capture complex OEM business needs—such as dealer enrollment, Dealer Portal SSO, OEM accessory ingestion, or secure checkout—and convert them into actionable technical specifications and robust solution designs
- Lead strategic technical scoping and estimation for new and evolving projects. Define key requirements, identify potential solutions, estimate effort and timelines, and proactively address technical challenges like SSO provisioning or data flows
- Collaborate with engineering, product, and design teams to develop prototypes, proofs of concept, and tightly integrated digital retail experiences—focusing on advanced concepts like digital lending, forms, document handling, and high-trust integrations
- Build and maintain strong relationships with OEM, dealership, and technology stakeholders. Drive successful integrations and serve as the technical point of contact during solution design, implementation, and ongoing collaboration
- Demonstrate hands-on technical proficiency, including calling APIs with tools such as Postman, developing architectural documentation (BRDs, PRDs, API specs), and ensuring project materials are organized and up-to-date in Confluence and integrated project systems such as Jira
- Communicate platform capabilities, solutions, and technical details clearly and effectively to all audiences, including executive-level stakeholders, internal team members, and external partners
- Deliver product demonstrations and presentations, negotiate technical details, and manage alignment and expectations across all parties involved
- Travel between 25 to 50 percent to engage with clients, participate in onsite workshops, lead strategy sessions, and support implementations
Our take
Car dealerships suffer from an inefficiency problem. The paperwork and administration required to complete a sale requires dealers to manage a disjointed set of various software applications. Tekion is offering an enticing remedy - a cloud-based automotive retail system that integrates the various software applications in a single infrastructure.
Competition has been strong, with rivals CDK Global and Reynolds & Reynolds offering a competitive raft of features, and benefiting from strong prior relationships with dealerships. Tekion, however, has nevertheless secured customers for the software in 28 states - likely in part due to the efficiency of partnering with a single growing service as opposed to a disparate spread.
This momentum shows no signs of slowing either, as Tekion has attracted attention from major players like CMC, Chrysler, and Chevrolet. By streamlining dealership operations into a single platform, the company is proving that even in a crowded market, innovation and simplicity can win over both dealers and industry partners.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
25% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Jul 2024
$200m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Oct 2021
$250m
SERIES D
Total funding: $635.1m
Company benefits
- Silicon Valley Startup Environment
- Stock Options
- Focus on Work/Life Balance
- Recognition Culture
- Health and Wellness
- Unparalleled Career Development
Company HQ
Pleasanton, CA
Leadership
Jay Vijayan
(Co-Founder & CEO)They started their career at Oracle, where they spent over 7 years in Management before spending 4 at VMware. They then worked at Tesla for 4 years, leaving their position as CIO to found Tekion in February 2016.
Guru Sankararaman
(Co-Founder & COO)After working as a Chief Architect at Cisco, they joined Tesla for 4 years. Initially they served as Director of Information Technology and then later became VP of Information Technology. Left this role to co-found Tekion in 2016.
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