Presales Solution Architect

Job Purpose:

The Pre-Sales Solutions Architect will own the technical estimation and engineering response for new client software engineering tenders and RFPs. The role leads the effort-sizing exercise end-to-end, decomposing each opportunity into engineering scope, team composition, timeline and cost across software engineering, machine learning, and DevOps disciplines. The output of this role directly shapes which bids we pursue, how we price them, and how we staff them, making it the bridge between commercial intent and engineering reality.

Duties & Responsibilities:

· Read and analyse incoming tender documents, RFPs and client briefs to extract the technical scope, functional requirements, non-functional constraints and any ambiguities that need clarification before pricing.

· Decompose each opportunity into a work breakdown structure covering all relevant engineering disciplines  (software engineering, machine learning, UI/UX, cybersecurity and DevOps) at a level of granularity sufficient to support defensible estimates.

· Produce duration estimates and engineering team-size proposals, including engineering roles and seniority over the project lifecycle — backed by historical data, comparable past projects and industry benchmarks.

· Build and maintain an internal estimation database of past projects, actual versus estimated effort, and lessons learned, so each new bid benefits from accumulated delivery experience.

· Run effort-estimation workshops with senior engineers and discipline leads where the bid’s complexity or novelty warrants expert input, and consolidate their inputs into a single coherent estimate.

· Identify and price technical risks (integration unknowns, third-party dependencies, regulatory constraints, performance uncertainty) and propose mitigation or buffering strategies for the commercial proposal.

· Recommend the most suitable solution architecture, technology stack and delivery approach for each opportunity, balancing client requirements against our team’s strengths, reusable assets and delivery economics.

· Draft the technical sections of bid responses, solution architecture, delivery methodology, team composition, project timeline, assumptions and exclusions, to a quality that requires only light editing before client submission.

· Coordinate with the commercial and account-management functions to align the technical estimate with pricing strategy, contract terms and client expectations.

· Attend client clarification sessions, pre-bid meetings and technical Q&A during the tender process, representing the engineering perspective and protecting the integrity of the estimate.

· After bid award, hand over the estimate, scope and assumptions to the delivery team in a structured way that ensures the project starts execution from a faithful representation of what was sold.

· Track post-mortem data on awarded projects (estimated versus actual effort, schedule slippage, scope changes) and feed those lessons back into the estimation methodology to continuously calibrate it.

· Stay current with engineering practices, delivery patterns and emerging technologies across software, AI, mobile and platform engineering so that estimates reflect how work is actually delivered today, not how it was delivered five years ago.

Requirements:

· Minimum 5 years of hands-on engineering experience, with at least the most recent years spent in technical leadership, architecture, or delivery management roles.

· Demonstrated experience producing engineering estimates for medium-to-large software projects sized end-to-end with documented assumptions.

· Broad working knowledge across the disciplines being estimated, software engineering, machine learning / AI, UI/UX, cybersecurity and DevOps, with enough depth to challenge specialist inputs without needing to be the specialist yourself.

· Strong written communication: you can take engineering scope and translate it into bid language that a client procurement function will understand, accept and rate well.

· Commercial awareness: you understand that estimates feed pricing, and that pricing decisions affect win probability, margin and team utilisation downstream.

· Confidence in client-facing situations, pre-bid meetings, clarification calls and tender defence presentations.

· A delivery track record you can point to, projects you have personally helped land, scope, or run, so estimates are anchored in real experience rather than theory.