Startup Solutions Architect, San Francisco Early Stage Startups

AI in this role

ragfine-tuning

Are you passionate about startups? Do you get excited about helping founders solve hard technical problems at the earliest and most critical stages of building their company? We're looking for a Solutions Architect who wants to be deeply embedded in San Francisco's startup ecosystem. Come join us!

Early-stage startups are unlike any other customer. Founders are moving fast, resources are tight, and the technical decisions they make today can either unlock their growth or become a bottleneck six months from now. Many of these companies are coming straight out of top accelerators like Y Combinator or are freshly backed by leading VC firms, and they need a trusted technical advisor in their corner. This is where you come in.

In this role, you'll work directly with early-stage founders across a wide range of industries including AI/ML, FinTech, ClimateTech, healthcare, consumer, B2B SaaS, and more. You'll help them make smart, pragmatic architectural decisions that set them up to move fast without breaking things later. You'll have the chance to build real, lasting relationships with these founders and establish yourself as one of the first trusted technical voices in their journey.

You won't be handing founders a generic playbook. On any given week you might be helping a first-time founder think through their architecture before they've written a single line of code, helping a seed-stage company figure out how to scale after an unexpected viral launch, or working through a compliance challenge with a FinTech startup that needs to move quickly but can't afford to cut corners.

Beyond your direct work with founders, you'll also get time to stay sharp and keep your technical skills fresh. You'll act as a voice for the startups you work with, making sure the right products and features are being built for their needs. And you'll have plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge more broadly by writing technical content and presenting at startup and developer events across San Francisco's ecosystem.

Key job responsibilities
- Work hands-on with early-stage founders to design and iterate on architectures that are practical for where they are today but built to scale as they grow
- Help startups navigate the fast-moving GenAI landscape, from selecting the right foundation models and AI services to building production-ready AI-powered products and services
- Guide founders through the real challenges of building GenAI applications, including managing model costs, latency, accuracy, safety, and AI best practices
- Support startups in building the right data foundations to power their AI products, whether that's vector databases, data pipelines, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or fine-tuning workflows
- Build and deepen relationships within San Francisco's startup ecosystem, including top accelerators like Y Combinator, incubators, and leading VC firms
- Be a voice for your founders, connecting their feedback and needs directly to product and engineering teams to help shape the tools and services being built for them
- Create technical content tailored to early-stage startups, such as blog posts, reference architectures, and sample code, that helps founders move faster and spend less time reinventing the wheel
- Share your expertise at startup events, demo days, and developer meetups across the San Francisco ecosystem to build trust and visibility in the community

About the team
Diverse Experiences
Amazon values diverse experiences. If your career hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative and relevant experiences that differ from what is listed in the in the job description, we encourage you to apply.

Why AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

Work/Life Balance
We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.

Inclusive Team Culture
Here at AWS, we value inclusivity. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empowers us to be proud of our differences and celebrate them. Ongoing events and learning experiences continue to inspire us to embrace our uniqueness.

Mentorship and Career Growth
We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Basic qualifications

- 2+ years of design, implementation, or consulting in applications and infrastructures experience
- 4+ years of specific technology domain areas (e.g. software development, cloud computing, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, networking, data & analytics) experience

Preferred qualifications

- Experience working within software development or Internet-related industries
- Experience migrating or transforming legacy customer solutions to the cloud
- Experience working with AWS technologies from a dev/ops perspective
- Experience working with end user or developer communities

Amazon is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of protected veteran status, disability, or other legally protected status.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct, adverse, and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Our inclusive culture empowers Amazonians to deliver the best results for our customers. If you have a disability and need a workplace accommodation or adjustment during the application and hiring process, including support for the interview or onboarding process, please visit https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/accommodations for more information. If the country/region you’re applying in isn’t listed, please contact your Recruiting Partner.

The base salary range for this position is listed below. Your Amazon package will include sign-on payments and restricted stock units (RSUs). Final compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, and location. Amazon also offers comprehensive benefits including health insurance (medical, dental, vision, prescription, Basic Life & AD&D insurance and option for Supplemental life plans, EAP, Mental Health Support, Medical Advice Line, Flexible Spending Accounts, Adoption and Surrogacy Reimbursement coverage), 401(k) matching, paid time off, and parental leave. Learn more about our benefits at https://amazon.jobs/en/benefits.

USA, CA, San Francisco - 151,000.00 - 204,300.00 USD annually

How we rate this

Startup Solutions Architect, San Francisco Early Stage Startups at Amazon rates 11 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.

Prepare for this job

A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

RAGFine Tuning

Questions you could be asked

How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: RAG and Fine Tuning. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them — a tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.

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