Cybersecurity Solutions Architect

Job Title: Cybersecurity Solutions Architect - Sales Engineering, Advisory and Engagement Leadership

Location: Canada

Employment Type: Full-time

Work Model: Remote / Hybrid

Reports To: Director - Cyber Strategy, Architecture and Solutions

Role Summary

The Cybersecurity Solutions Architect supports and extends the Cyber Strategy, Architecture and Solutions function by owning well-defined solution, advisory, and pre-sales workstreams across client engagements. The role combines solution architecture, sales engineering, security advisory, and engagement leadership. It is hands-on, client-facing, and expected to produce clear, practical, and delivery-ready outcomes.

This person helps shape client solutions from discovery through scope, design, proposal development, delivery transition, and post-engagement lessons learned. They work closely with account teams, delivery teams, vendor partners, and the Network Operations Center team to ensure solutions are commercially realistic, technically sound, operationally supportable, and aligned to client needs.

Core Responsibilities

Solution Architecture and Design

• Design cybersecurity solutions across identity, endpoint, cloud, network, email security, SSE, and managed security service domains.
• Apply reference architectures, design standards, and reusable patterns while adapting them to client-specific constraints.
• Produce clear solution designs, architecture diagrams, implementation considerations, and supporting documentation.
• Translate client requirements, risks, current-state findings, and commercial constraints into practical recommendations.
• Validate that proposed solutions can be implemented, operated, and supported by the appropriate internal or client teams.

Sales Engineering and Pre-Sales Support

• Lead or support discovery sessions with client technical, security, and business stakeholders.
• Develop structured solution approaches, technical recommendations, and proposal content.
• Contribute to RFP responses, client presentations, pricing inputs, and technical positioning.
• Support development of Statements of Work, including scope, assumptions, exclusions, dependencies, roles, responsibilities, and acceptance criteria.
• Help balance ideal security outcomes with client budget, timelines, procurement realities, delivery capacity, and maturity.

Advisory and Client Engagement

• Facilitate or co-facilitate workshops, assessments, technical discussions, roadmap sessions, and executive readouts.
• Provide guidance aligned to frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Critical Security Controls, ISO 27001, and other relevant standards.
• Translate technical findings into prioritized, business-relevant recommendations and improvement plans.
• Support maturity assessments, control gap analysis, cyber roadmaps, security operating model discussions, and risk-based prioritization.
• Prepare client-facing reports, summaries, briefings, and engagement artifacts that are clear, polished, and actionable.

Engagement Leadership and Oversight

• Function as a technical lead or workstream owner across selected client opportunities and engagements.
• Coordinate with account, delivery, advisory, vendor, and operational teams to keep scope, solution design, and delivery expectations aligned.
• Track key engagement risks, open decisions, technical dependencies, and follow-up actions.
• Help oversee quality of client-facing deliverables, including solution designs, diagrams, assessment outputs, tabletop findings, and roadmaps.
• Escalate risks, misalignment, or delivery concerns early and recommend practical paths forward.

Delivery Support and Transition

• Work with delivery teams to ensure smooth transition from proposal and design into implementation or operational delivery.
• Support design validation, technical handoff, and knowledge transfer activities.
• Assist with troubleshooting and resolving design-related issues during implementation.
• Confirm that implemented or onboarded solutions align to intended architecture, scope, and client outcomes.
• Capture lessons learned and contribute to continuous improvement of delivery methods and reusable assets.

NOC Collaboration and Operational Alignment

• Collaborate with the Network Operations Center team to ensure proposed solutions are operationally viable, monitorable, supportable, and aligned to service delivery practices.
• Engage the NOC team during solution design, onboarding planning, alerting strategy, escalation design, runbook development, and service transition.
• Help define operational requirements including logging, monitoring, alert triage, escalation paths, ticket workflows, reporting expectations, and client communication touchpoints.
• Support handoff from project delivery into ongoing operations, ensuring the NOC team has the required context, documentation, access, and runbooks.
• Use operational feedback from the NOC team to improve solution quality, reduce recurring issues, and strengthen future client designs.

Incident Readiness and Tabletop Exercises

• Support the design, facilitation, and documentation of cybersecurity tabletop exercises.
• Develop realistic technical and operational scenarios aligned to client environments and threat models.
• Identify gaps in incident response capabilities, roles, communications, escalation, tooling, and decision-making.
• Translate tabletop findings into practical readiness improvements and prioritized recommendations.

Vendor and Technology Alignment

• Work with technologies such as CrowdStrike, Netskope, Proofpoint, Microsoft Security, cloud-native security services, SIEM or SOAR platforms, vulnerability management tools, and related technologies.
• Support integration of vendor technologies into broader security architectures and managed service models.
• Maintain awareness of vendor capabilities, product changes, security trends, and relevant market direction.
• Participate in vendor discussions where needed to validate design decisions, licensing assumptions, integrations, and support models.

Practice Contribution and Continuous Improvement

• Develop and improve templates, diagrams, reference architectures, proposal content, SOW language, assessment methods, and reporting formats.
• Help standardize solution design, discovery, scoping, and client handoff practices.
• Share lessons learned and technical knowledge across the team.
• Use AI-assisted and automation tools responsibly to improve research, documentation, proposal development, analysis, and repeatable delivery assets.
• Continuously grow technical, advisory, commercial, and client leadership capability.

Qualifications

Experience

• 5 or more years of experience in cybersecurity, solutions architecture, sales engineering, technical consulting, managed security services, or related roles.
• Experience supporting or leading client-facing engagements in consulting, managed services, technology services, or advisory environments.
• Experience with both solution design and implementation or operational transition of security solutions.
• Experience coordinating across sales, delivery, operations, vendors, and client stakeholders.

Technical Expertise

• Working knowledge across identity and access management, endpoint security, EDR or XDR, cloud security, network security, email security, SSE, ZTNA, SWG, logging, monitoring, and threat protection concepts.
• Familiarity with Microsoft security technologies and at least some experience with platforms such as CrowdStrike, Netskope, Proofpoint, SIEM or SOAR tools, vulnerability management, or MDR and MSSP service models.
• Ability to create architecture diagrams, current-state and future-state views, implementation considerations, and operational handoff documentation.
• Familiarity with frameworks such as NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Critical Security Controls, ISO 27001, and incident response lifecycle concepts.

Professional Skills

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to create polished client-facing deliverables.
• Ability to engage technical stakeholders, business stakeholders, security leaders, and operational teams.
• Strong facilitation skills for discovery sessions, workshops, tabletop exercises, and technical solution discussions.
• Sound judgment when balancing risk reduction, client maturity, budget, timeline, operational supportability, and delivery feasibility.
• Comfortable managing ambiguity, shifting priorities, multiple client engagements, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, follow-through, and attention to detail.

Education and Certifications

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent professional experience.
• Certifications such as CISSP, Security+, AZ-500, SC-200, CCSP, vendor certifications, or related credentials are an asset.
  

Scope and Accountability

• Own selected solution design, sales engineering, advisory, NOC-aligned, and engagement oversight activities across multiple client opportunities and engagements.
• Operate within defined architecture standards and guidance from the Director while exercising independent judgment on assigned workstreams.
• Contribute directly to proposal quality, solution consistency, delivery readiness, operational supportability, and client satisfaction.
• Help improve repeatability, quality, and scalability across the Cyber Strategy, Architecture and Solutions function.
  
  

Success Measures

• High-quality, clear, implementable, and operationally supportable solution designs.
• Strong contribution to successful proposals, SOWs, client workshops, and advisory engagements.
• Effective collaboration with the NOC team, delivery teams, account teams, vendors, and client stakeholders.
• Smooth transition of solutions from design into delivery and operations.
• Positive feedback from clients and internal teams.
• Growth in technical depth, advisory judgment, engagement leadership, and commercial awareness over time.