Solutions Architect

Learning Solution Architect

Location: United States

SweetRush has an exciting opportunity for a talented professional to join our Client Solutions team!

About the Role

The Solution Architect (SA) is a key member of the Client Solutions team, the team within SweetRush tasked with designing brilliant solutions for our client’s challenges and converting client inquiries to closed business. SAs partner with the client and internal stakeholders to co-create a learning solution, budget, and project plan that addresses the client’s goals, challenges, and constraints. This individual embodies the SweetRush culture and serves as a key partner to SweetRush clients throughout their experience.

Do you love to craft solutions, strategize, and ‘win’ in competitive bidding situations? Are you great at building trust with others? Do you get excited about presenting your creative and fun ideas? Will you bring a sense of humor and a calm demeanor in the face of timeline-driven challenges?

The SA is involved in the beginning, crafting solutions, and in this capacity, it will affect a significant number of projects. However, at some point you will hand off the project to the project team, so you will not be hands-on in further development. Being consultative and impacting a lot of projects, but not doing the actual development, must be appealing to you.

Responding to RFPs (Requests for Proposals) and crafting client solutions can be a demanding job that often is timeline-driven and exists within the context of ‘competition.’ Does this energize you or stress you out? If it energizes, read on!

SweetRush is a remote organization and as such all resources must: be technically savvy, have access to a strong internet signal, comfortable with virtual/instant messaging and conferencing tools, and generally available during established working hours.

Responsibilities

Consulting and Solution Design:

• Apply instructional design expertise and SweetRush capabilities to develop solutions for clients' training challenges.
• Lead scoping meetings with clients to understand their needs and propose effective solutions.
• Lead internal discussions to define solutions with input from the internal team.
• Embody and represent SweetRush’s values of partnership, fairness, creativity, and customer service.

Client Connection & Presentations:

• Captivate audiences with a dynamic and upbeat presentation style.
• Provide real-time recommendations, foster discussions, and build trust.
• Tailor presentations to resonate with diverse audiences.
• Effectively convey complex concepts with simplicity.

Work Effort/Timeline Estimation/Planning and Documents:

• Estimate work effort using SweetRush-developed tools and collaborate with functional experts.
• Co-design solutions with instructional design, creative design, and engineering experts.
• Write comprehensive proposals aligning with SweetRush’s unique value proposition.
• Lead capability presentations and craft compelling responses to Requests for Proposals (RFPs).
• Consult on resource assignments based on project and client needs.

Project Transition and On-boarding:

• Onboard project managers, instructional designers, creative directors, and technical leads.
• Attend initial client meetings to ensure a smooth transition from scoping to project kick-off.
• Engage SweetRush team leaders in decision-making processes related to pricing and negotiations.

Project Management for Business Development:

• Participate in internal business development meetings and maintain CRM accuracy.
• Delegate tasks to the solution enablement and solution design teams within the Client Solutions team.
• Determine next steps and deadlines, ensuring timely execution by the team.

Account Management for Business Development:

• Collaborate with business development professionals and project managers to manage accounts.
• Identify and qualify sales opportunities with existing clients, maintaining strong relationships.
• Develop strategies for client engagement and pursue re-engagement opportunities.
• Meet with key decision-makers and establish networks within existing client organizations.

Required Skills

• Bachelor’s Degree in Instructional Design or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in the training/learning field with a focus on blended learning solutions.
• 5+ years of experience in a consulting environment and client-facing roles.
• Experience or orientation towards business development.
• Ability to travel occasionally to visit clients onsite (typically 3-6 trips total per year)

Key Attributes

• Strong understanding of instructional design and the ability to translate business needs into effective learning solutions.
• Expertise in project management and the ability to guide and engage team members effectively.
• Comfort in navigating ambiguity and adapting to unique client needs.
• Affection for the creative process and the ability to recommend solutions even in uncertain situations.
• Professional demeanor with excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to present capabilities and training solutions effectively in group and virtual settings.
• Excellent time management and multitasking skills.
• Resourcefulness in handling limitations and flexibility to wear multiple hats.
• Joy in developing long-term relationships with both the team and clients.

SweetRush Is an Equal Opportunity Employer

We are committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, or belief; national, social, or ethnic origin; sex (including pregnancy); age; physical, mental, or sensory disability; HIV status; sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or expression; marital, civil union, or domestic partnership status; past or present military service; family medical history or genetic information; family or parental status; or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. SweetRush will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. We encourage applicants of all ages.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Call to Action: Submit Your Resume!

Team chemistry is everything to us, so our ultimate goal is to find the right fit. If the above describes your interests and experience, and you believe this will be a dream job, please submit your resume. We are excited to hear from you!

Please note: We're all about remote work and have collaborators based all around the world; however, SweetRush is a US-based company, and English is our primary language. If you'd like to be considered for this opportunity, please submit your resume in English.

SweetRush believes in transparency and fairness. And for that reason, all of our active searches are available on the SweetRush “Join Us” page at https://www.sweetrush.com/join-us/. You can also find a handful of openings posted on our LinkedIn company page under the “Jobs” tab at https://www.linkedin.com/company/sweetrush/jobs/.

Unfortunately, cybercriminals take advantage of good people. Please know that SweetRush would never ask for your personal information such as SSN, banking information, credit cards, etc. during the application or interview process. Always be mindful to protect your personal and financial information, and use careful judgment when providing information to recruiters or talent acquisition professionals.

PS: A bit about SweetRush—This year we will celebrate our 22nd anniversary developing performance improvement / training solutions. We have a significant list of high-profile clients such as Google, CVS, Hilton, Bridgestone, Mondelez, Cisco, — and we are very good at keeping our clients happy and working with us year after year. We are a powerhouse of blended learning solutions and extremely adept at crafting highly engaging, graphically rich, blended learning experiences, including gamification and mobile learning. We’ve developed a powerful authoring system that allows us to go well beyond what most vendors or off the shelf tools can offer and deliver, but we are also masters of the industry standard tools and utilize them regularly. We are very focused on project management and keeping large and complex projects moving smoothly. We have a fantastic team and culture and a ‘near-zero’ turnover. We are that unique kind of company where everyone feels respected, acknowledged and treated fairly. In 2009, we went virtual and our team is geographically distributed, but very tightly connected.

We have managed, largely via referrals and marketing, to attract a great group of clients, and we anticipate quite a bit of continued growth into 2024.