Principal Solutions Architect

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Full Time McLean, VA, US

Merlin Group operates at the intersection of cyber innovation, national security, and technology-driven transformation. With a mission to accelerate the adoption of high-impact technologies across the U.S. public sector and regulated commercial markets, Merlin is uniquely structured around three core tenets – Invest, Enable, and Scale – each designed to address a specific stage of the technology lifecycle. Together, our affiliates – Merlin Ventures, CGC, and Merlin Cyber – form a flywheel that builds enduring capability for customers, partners, and the broader cyber ecosystem, operationalizing technological advancement into mission-ready, enterprise-grade solutions.

At Merlin, we believe our strength lies in our people. Team members are encouraged to be creative, collaborative, and nimble, pursuing paths to deliver the cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions that our customers rely on. From next‑generation cyber defense to secure cloud and AI, we are united by one purpose – transforming innovation into mission impact.

Merlin Cyber is seeking a Principal Solutions Architect to design the cross‑cutting solutions our Technical Practice Area (TPA) sellers take to market. You own design direction for Merlin validated solutions, architectures that combine several partner products across multiple Zero Trust pillars, which Merlin Labs engineers then build and document. The other half of the job is making those solutions sellable, so TPA leads and sellers have the narratives, visuals, and answers they need to run a solution conversation.

The role calls for broad experience across IT and cybersecurity, commercial instinct for what makes a solution sellable, and strong fluency in U.S. federal requirements, frameworks, programs, and missions.

You will also help evaluate emerging technologies in AI, post‑quantum, and cybersecurity, decide which of them become Merlin offerings, and work directly with early‑stage ISVs to align their technology to federal use cases.

Hybrid or remote role. Candidates near the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) are preferred due to occasional collaborative and partner sessions at our headquarters in McLean/Tysons Corner, VA.

• Design cross‑cutting Merlin solutions that combine partner products across the identity, device, network, application, data, analytics, and automation pillars, mapping agency requirements to Merlin's capabilities.
• Lead technical discovery sessions, whiteboarding, and architecture reviews, communicating clearly with both executive and engineering audiences.
• Document assumptions, dependencies, and risks, and recommend phased deployment roadmaps aligned with agency modernization priorities.
• Produce architecture diagrams, reference designs, and implementation patterns that show alignment to federal frameworks and mission outcomes.

• Own the design and target architecture of Merlin validated solutions, including cross‑cutting reference architectures, BOMs, and service descriptions developed with TPA leads and Merlin Labs.
• Decide which combinations of partner products become named Merlin solutions. Look for pairings that create a differentiated, sellable offer, and resolve overlap between competing partners.
• Approve the architecture and solution definition for each Merlin Validated Solution. Labs engineers author the technical content, integration guide, and runbook that ship with it.
• Translate product capabilities into mission‑aligned value propositions and prepare executive‑ready and technical visuals and narratives for briefings and proposals.
• Bring AI‑enabled capabilities and emerging technologies into solution offerings with secure design and responsible use in mind and advise on adoption of AI/ML in federal environments.
• Provide pre‑sales engineering support and hand off cleanly to TPA leads and customer success teams.
• Align proposed solutions with agency needs and federal…