Federal Pre-Sales Solution Architect
Istari
IT, Sales & Business Development
Remote
USD 140k-170k / year + Equity
Posted on Dec 17, 2025
[ABOUT ISTARI DIGITAL]
Istari is a digital engineering software company enabling our customers to turn the physical world into the digital to accomplish their specific mission or business objectives.
Istari was founded with the vision of making open, scalable digital engineering ecosystems a reality – where new technologies and systems are created digitally, free from the real-world constraints of costs and schedules. We are creating the world’s best engineering model sharing platform, allowing our customers to simply and securely integrate their models across different engineering disciplines, organizations, and security levels.
At Istari, we are passionate about our mission of creating the world's first open and scalable industrial metaverse. Whether our customers are designing prototypes, performing virtual testing, or training AI and autonomy for complex systems, we know that going digital will save them time, resources, and reduce their environmental impact.
While we are a distributed team with most team-members working remotely, we place an emphasis on staying connected and collaborative, prioritizing in-person opportunities to build trust as a team. At Istari, we still believe that trust is best built in-person. To do this, we have an engineering headquarters in Cambridge, MA for focused technical development and several times per year we gather for an off-site that allows us to develop our professional skills and our team relationships.
[VALUES]
At Istari, we live by our values, which include:
Purposeful Autonomy
We value letting people self-organize and self-motivate.
Our flat structure and lack of meeting clutter are meant to empower individuals and teams to be proactive.
Our autonomy is measured, goal-oriented, and results-driven – not meandering.
Clear objectives help us prioritize our time.
Smart Transparency
We believe in honest-but-kind communication, transparency, and open-door policies.
We love learning about challenges and tackling them early, not hearing good or bad news late.
We share work-in-progress across our team.
Fast feedback keeps autonomy purposeful.
Continual Curiosity
At Istari, we love learning to do things ourselves.
We ask, read, share, teach – even watch YouTube videos – to learn new skills to solve problems.
When we make breakthroughs, we write them down.
Writing focuses ideas, helps us learn, and helps us share.
Equal Opportunity
Istari is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran status, or disability status.
The Federal Pre-Sales Solution Architect serves as the technical leader and trusted advisor in our federal sales cycles. You will partner closely with Federal Account Executives, Sales Leadership and the Executive team to conduct discovery, design secure deployment architectures, craft compelling value narratives, and ensure the feasibility and success of Istari implementations across DoW and federal civilian missions.
You will translate complex engineering workflows, data ecosystems, and security boundaries into scalable Istari architectures spanning cloud and on-prem environments across classification levels. Your work accelerates customer understanding, reduces technical risk, and drives confidence in the path from proof of value to production to enterprise adoption.
This role is foundational to our federal GTM motion:
- Federal AEs lead commercial/account strategy, opportunity qualification, and the sales cycle from prospecting through contract close.
- Federal Solution Architects ensure technical alignment, solution viability, and deployment clarity to win the technical decision.
Together, these roles form the Federal growth engine for Istari.
Key Responsibilities
- Technical Discovery & Mission Understanding: Lead technical discovery sessions to understand mission requirements, engineering workflows, data flows, and infrastructure constraints. Evaluate cross-program collaboration needs, security boundaries, classification requirements, and deployment feasibility. Map customer challenges to Istari’s architecture, capabilities, and value.
- Architecture Design & Deployment Planning: Design deployment architectures using Istari’s control plane, data plane, and agent frameworks. Architect solutions for a variety of customer environments (e.g. AWS GovCloud, Azure, on-prem HPC environments, containerized platforms (EKS, ECS, K8s), and multi-tenant deployments). Produce architecture diagrams, configuration specifications, and implementation guidelines. Ensure designs support cross-domain workflows, engineering automation, and ROI from digital engineering modernization.
- Demo Delivery, Technical Storytelling & Value Translation: Own end-to-end demo preparation and delivery for federal prospects. Tailor demos to mission-specific scenarios, data flows, engineering tools, and classification requirements. Build repeatable demo environments and customize them for unique use cases across DoD, IC, and federal civilian agencies. Collaborate with AEs to craft compelling technical narratives that articulate the “why,” not just the “how,” of Istari. Capture demo feedback to refine content, improve demo flows, and influence roadmap priorities.
- Pre-Sales Engagement & Technical Validation: Lead whiteboarding sessions, workflow walkthroughs, and integration deep dives. Develop small-scale proofs of concept to validate integrations, data orchestration, and engineering automations.
- Partner with AEs to quantify value, support ROI models, and articulate the technical pathway to successful production deployments.
- Security, Compliance & Infrastructure Expertise: Advise customers on cloud security posture, Zero Trust patterns, enclave design, and network segmentation. Support ATO-related discussions, boundary definitions, and infrastructure alignment. Work with Istari technical leadership (Cybersecurity, Engineering, Product, Customer Success) to ensure solutions meet IL2–IL6 and agency-specific security requirements.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Cybersecurity, Product, Engineering, and Customer Success to translate customer needs into roadmap inputs and deployment patterns. Collaborate with Sales Operations & Strategy on qualification, solution design, and repeatable playbooks. Contribute reusable documentation, demo content, and technical assets to scale the federal GTM motion.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical field (or equivalent experience).
- 5–10+ years in pre-sales engineering, solutions architecture, systems engineering, or technical consulting for complex enterprise or infrastructure software.
- Experience supporting federal missions—DoD, intelligence community, national labs, or defense primes.
- Hands-on experience with AWS GovCloud and secure cloud/on-prem hybrid architectures.
- Prior ownership of technical demos, ideally for infrastructure, data, or engineering platforms.
- Strong technical storytelling and demo delivery skills—able to translate complex concepts into intuitive, mission-relevant narratives.
- Ability to architect secure, distributed systems across classification levels and network boundaries.
- Proficiency with containerized deployments, networking, cloud security, and systems integration.
- Skilled at diagramming, documenting, and communicating architectures with clarity.
- Excellent collaboration skills across sales, engineering, and product.
- Must be a US citizen living within the United States.
Preferred Qualifications
- Background in aerospace, defense, digital engineering, or mission-critical infrastructure software with a solutions sales model.
- Experience with CAD/CAE, PLM, MBSE, or engineering data pipelines.
- Familiarity with ATO processes and cross-domain workflows.
Why Join Us?
- Shape the future of digital engineering across the DoD and national security ecosystem.
- Lead the technical motion at the intersection of AI, engineering infrastructure, and multi-domain collaboration.
- Work directly engineering leadership and mission stakeholders on high-impact deployments.
- Influence the product roadmap through real mission needs and demo feedback.
- Join a high-trust, mission-driven team building transformative technology.
BENEFITS
We offer highly competitive benefits, including:
Health and Family
- Medical/Dental/Vision
- Employee Premiums are 100% Company Paid
- Life Insurance
- Flexible Work Hours
- Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) with federal government holidays
Financial
- Competitive Compensation
- 401k
- Company Stock Options
- Home Office Setup Budget
Learning
- Reimbursement for approved trainings and subscriptions
- Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)
Note - some benefits are not available to interns or contractors.
Thank you for your interest in Istari. Expect to hear back from us soon with next steps.
140000 - 170000 USD a year