Principal Solutions Architect - SAARC

Available Locations: Bengaluru/Mumbai/New Delhi

About the Role

As a Principal Solutions Architect, you'll be a trusted advisor to Cloudflare's most strategic enterprise customers across the Asia Pacific region. You will work at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and executive influence, helping organisations in industries such as financial services, government, and telecommunications navigate complex digital transformation journeys using Cloudflare's platform.

You'll speak the "customer language", understand the CxO mindset, and influence technology decisions at the intersection of risk, resilience, and innovation. Whether it's advising a CISO on a Zero Trust security strategy, helping a CIO rationalise their network architecture, or working with engineering leadership on edge-native application modernisation, you'll help our most important customers reimagine how the Internet works for them and position Cloudflare as the foundational platform for that future.

You'll be embedded in account planning with our sales and solutions engineering teams, operating proactively across the full customer lifecycle; from early strategic discovery through to long-term platform adoption and expansion. As a Principal Solutions Architect, you'll also play a significant role in raising the architectural capability of the broader Solutions Engineering organisation across APAC.

What You’ll Do

• Own long-term executive relationships across Cloudflare's most strategic APAC accounts; engaging CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs on their multi-year technology agendas and positioning Cloudflare as a foundational platform, not a point solution.  
• Design and facilitate executive vision-setting and architecture workshops that produce tangible outcomes: multi-year roadmaps, reference architectures, and business cases co-developed with customers' enterprise architects and engineering leadership.
• Translate industry trends like Zero Trust, Digital Sovereignty, AI workload security, cloud-to-edge migration into actionable architectural strategies tailored to each customer's business context and regulatory environment.
• Guide clients across the full engagement lifecycle; from strategic discovery and architecture design through proof of concept, value realisation, and expansion planning while proactively partnering with the Sales and Solutions Engineering team to surface architectural opportunities before deals are formally scoped. 
• Elevate the architectural capability of the broader APAC Solutions Engineering team by developing reusable workshop frameworks, reference architectures, and best practices that others can apply independently; and by mentoring Solutions Engineers in senior stakeholder engagement.
• Represent Cloudflare externally at industry events, executive roundtables, and sector forums as a credible peer to enterprise architects and technology leaders; produce content: white papers, architectural guidance that establishes Cloudflare's voice on key transformation themes across the region.

What Success Looks Like

• In your first 6 months:
  • You've established trusted advisor relationships with senior technical and business stakeholders across 3-5 of Cloudflare's most strategic APAC accounts.
  • You've designed and facilitated 2-3 executive vision-setting or architecture workshops that have resulted in documented multi-year roadmap alignment with Cloudflare embedded as a core platform component.
  • You've shaped at least one strategic engagement where you've connected Cloudflare's developer and edge compute capabilities to a customer's application modernisation or AI strategy; demonstrating platform breadth beyond security alone.
  • You've contributed at least one reusable asset to the APAC SE team; a workshop framework, reference architecture, or architectural playbook that others can apply independently.

What We’re Looking For

• 12+ years of experience in technical presales, enterprise architecture, or IT leadership (e.g., Chief Architect, CTO, CISO).
• A genuine ability to operate at two levels simultaneously: credible in a boardroom conversation about digital strategy, and capable of going deep on architecture design with engineering teams.
• Demonstrated experience leading executive-level workshops, technology strategy sessions, or architectural visioning engagements with tangible business outcomes.
• Strong understanding of transformation priorities relevant to APAC enterprises: Zero Trust architecture, cloud and network modernisation, digital sovereignty and data residency, AI infrastructure, and application performance at scale.
• Experience with modern application architecture patterns (microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, CI/CD, serverless and edge compute).
• A track record of proactively contributing to pipeline and account expansion through architectural influence — not just responding to requests.  
• Proven ability to enable and elevate peers: you've built frameworks, run internal enablement, or mentored others at scale.
• Confident, compelling communicator in both executive business settings and technical deep dives and comfortable representing Cloudflare publicly at industry events.
• Bonus: Familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks (TOGAF), security standards (NIST SP 800-207, ISO 27001), and IT risk management principles relevant to regulated industries.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Security, or related field.
• Experience in regulated industries (FSI, Government, Telco) or complex multi-cloud/hybrid environments.
• Hands-on technical curiosity: you stay current across networking, cloud infrastructure, application security, and developer platforms; not because the job requires it, but because you find it genuinely interesting.
• Prior experience in a role that required navigating cultural and linguistic diversity across multiple APAC markets.