Positively disrupting an industry that has not seen any innovation in over 50 years, Tekion has challenged the paradigm with the first and fastest cloud-native automotive platform that includes the revolutionary Automotive Retail Cloud (ARC) for retailers, Automotive Enterprise Cloud (AEC) for manufacturers and other large automotive enterprises and Automotive Partner Cloud (APC) for technology and industry partners. Tekion connects the entire spectrum of the automotive retail ecosystem through one seamless platform. The transformative platform uses cutting-edge technology, big data, machine learning, and AI to seamlessly bring together OEMs, retailers/dealers and consumers. With its highly configurable integration and greater customer engagement capabilities, Tekion is enabling the best automotive retail experiences ever. Tekion employs close to 3,000 people across North America, Asia and Europe.
Role Summary
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.
Key Responsibilities- 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.
- 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
***Current Tekion employees – Please apply via Greenhouse Internal Job Board.
Sponsorship
- Please note that visa sponsorship is not available for this position.
Perks and Benefits
- Competitive compensation and generous stock options
- 100% employer-paid top-of-the-line medical, dental and vision coverage
- Great benefits including unlimited PTO, parental leave and free snacks and beverages
- The opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds from Silicon Valley’s most dominant and successful companies
- Be part of an early stage, hyper-growth start-up with the opportunity to grow and prosper
- Work on the latest and coolest technologies – everything is home-grown and built ground-up
- A dynamic work environment with a strong sense of community and collaboration
- The open and transparent culture that encourages innovation, rewards performance and discourages hierarchy
- Exciting opportunities for career growth and development
Current Tekion Employees – Please apply via Greenhouse Internal Job Board
The salary range describes the minimum to maximum base salary range for this position across applicable US locations. The actual compensation offered may vary from the posted hiring range based on geographic location, work experience, education, licensure requirements and/or skill level and will be finalized at the time of offer. In addition to the compensation listed, this position may be eligible for equity compensation, and/or a bonus or commission whereby total compensation may exceed base salary depending on individual or company performance. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range during the hiring process.
Tekion is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, victim of violence or having a family member who is a victim of violence, the intersectionality of two or more protected categories, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
For more information on our privacy practices, please refer to our Applicant Privacy Notice here.
Top Skills
What We Do
At Tekion, we believe that business applications don’t have to be boring. In fact, they should be simple, fun and cool! They should be as delightful to use as your favorite social or consumer application, yet powerful enough to seamlessly and efficiently run global businesses that provide unparalleled consumer experience without compromise.
Founded by visionary entrepreneur and innovator Jay Vijayan, we are building the world’s best business applications on the cloud starting with the automotive retail industry. We inherently use cutting-edge technologies like big data, machine learning/AI, and human computer interaction (voice, touch, vision, sensors and IoT). We are inventing new technology along the way to overcome barriers and solve big problems, all while having a blast doing it!
Our flagship product offering, Automotive Retail Cloud ™- an industry-first cloud-native retail platform, including all functionalities of a Dealer Management System (DMS) launched recently.
