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How to Screen Solutions Architect Resumes
Solutions architect spans pre-sales, delivery, and enterprise architecture, and the title alone won't tell you whether a candidate designed systems, sold them, or drew the diagrams. "Architected" is the easiest verb to write and the hardest to verify. The screen that matters decodes which kind of architect they are, then finds the designs that actually got built and the customers or deals they moved.
Rank your candidate pool →What to screen for
Core qualifications
- Clear flavor — pre-sales, delivery, or enterprise — matched to what the role actually needs
- Architectures that were built and run, not slideware — with the technical depth to back them
- Customer or stakeholder impact: deals influenced, migrations delivered, or reference designs adopted
- Breadth across systems plus genuine depth somewhere — credibility with engineers, not just slides
- Domain and technology fit — the platforms and integrations they designed map to your environment
Red flags
What to watch for in solutions architect resumes
- "Architected" everywhere with no system that got built or customer that adopted it
- Diagrams and decks with no evidence the design survived contact with implementation
- Pre-sales polish with no technical depth, or deep IC work with no architecture ownership
- Every platform and pattern name-dropped, with no design they can walk through end to end
- Enterprise-architect title with no delivered system or measurable business outcome
Worth verifying
Claims that are easy to write, hard to back up
- "Architected the solution" — was it built and run, or did it stop at the diagram?
- "Drove the deal / migration" — designed and delivered it, or presented someone else's design?
- "Designed for scale" — to what load, and did the built system actually hold there?
- "Expert across the stack" — which design could they whiteboard and defend to an engineer?
The fast way
Screen solutions architects faster
For solutions architect reqs, classify the candidate against your real need first — a pre-sales architect and a delivery architect are different hires wearing the same title. Rank on designs that were actually built and the customer or deal impact behind them, and probe any resume that is all diagrams and no delivery. The strongest architects can walk through a system end to end and name what it ran in production; the weak ones name patterns and hope you won't ask.
Resume Autopsy ranks your whole solutions architect applicant pool against the job description in minutes — a 0–100 fit score and a MATCH / PARTIAL / MISS checklist with evidence quotes for every candidate, so you know who to interview first and can defend the call.
Try it on your next req →Screen other roles
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