Director - Solution Engineering

About Zeta: Zeta is a globally recognized next-gen banking technology company. Our modern platforms enable financial institutions and fintechs to launch extensible and compliant banking asset and liability products spanning cards, loans, and deposits. Our cloud-native and fully API-enabled stack supports processing, issuing, lending, core banking, fraud, loyalty, digital banking, and agentic AI solutions amongst many other capabilities. Zeta has 1700+ employees with over 70% in technology roles across locations in the US, Middle East, and Asia - representing one of the largest and most capable teams ever assembled in banking tech. Globally, customers have issued 30M+ cards on Zeta's platform expected to grow to 60M+ in the coming years. Most recently valued at $2B, Zeta counts Softbank, Mastercard, and Optum amongst its investors. About the Role Zeta solves hard technology problems for financial institutions. We do not offer a single product sold repeatedly, but solutions assembled from our processing, issuing, payments, lending, core, and digital banking platforms to answer a problem a bank has been unable to solve with what it already owns. Banks do not buy platforms. They buy the belief that a platform will survive their hardest workloads,their integration mechanics, and their examiner. You are the person who builds that belief, deep enough that the bank's own architects will defend it in a room you are not in. This is a hands-on individual contributor role with ownership of the sales engineering function for Zeta's banking solutions business in the US. You will run technical discovery with institutions that have twenty years of accumulated systems, design the target architecture and the path to it, defend that design through enterprise architecture, security, and procurement review, and stay on the deal until it signs. Responsibilities: Deep expertise Gain an in-depth and hands-on understanding of the full Zeta stack: processing and issuing across credit, debit, and prepaid, core banking, deposits, lending, payments, fraud, loyalty, digital banking applications, and our agentic AI capabilities In depth here means equivalent to our Product and Engineering teams that actually develop the stack, with first-hand knowledge of the modules, APIs, low-code extension points, events, data model, and features Hands-on means having used each of those interfaces, APIs, events, and features yourself, in the manner an actual customer is expected to use them Know the deployment story cold: environments, residency, resilience, and the answers an institution's infrastructure and security teams will demand Discovery and solution design Run technical discovery inside institutions with large existing estates, and find the problem worth solving rather than the problem first described Assemble solutions across multiple platforms into one proposition, and be the person who decides what is in scope and what is a later phase Craft solutions that meet the customer's needs on the fly during calls and presentations, with the readiness to demonstrate them live Reference architecture and coexistence Produce the target architecture and the integration design against the institution's existing core, ledger, data, and channel systems Design coexistence and phasing: what moves first, what runs in parallel, what is decommissioned and when. Build the reusable reference architectures that let the next deal start from something Demos and proofs Build and maintain demo environments across the platform set, covering the workflows a bank actually runs rather than a feature tour Design and run proofs of concept, bake-offs, and tabletop exercises against criteria you helped the customer write, before a competitor writes them instead Enterprise evaluation Own technical RFP and RFI responses, security questionnaires, penetration test and audit report reviews, resilience and exit planning questions, and vendor due diligence Create technical diagrams, architecture illustrations, and visuals that make the response clear rather than long Carry the technical case through enterprise architecture review boards, information security review, and procurement Banking service provider channel Serve as the technical counterpart to a partner's product and engineering leadership through evaluation, integration design, and launch Enable the partner's own sales engineers and solution consultants to position and demonstrate our capability without us in the room, and keep that enablement current as the product moves Competitive positioning Maintain a working analysis of the field: incumbent full-stack providers with deep installed bases, modern-sounding platforms running on older cores under new ownership, the in-house build, and the systems integrator who proposes to modernize what the bank already owns Know what each buyer already believes about that field, and position against the belief rather than the vendor. Understand where a competitor is genuinely better placed, and requalify rather than discount Marketing and product Work with Marketing to produce technical thought leadership: articles, whitepapers, video scripts, case studies, and webinars. Speak at industry forums and events, and support analyst engagement Carry the field's evidence back into Product: what was asked for, what was doubted, what lost, and what the roadmap has to answer next Key Performance Metrics : Institutional sales cycles run in quarters, and the first eighteen months buy the right to be evaluated before they buy revenue. Success is measured in two parts: what you build, which is yours alone, and what you contribute to alongside sales and delivery. What you build and own: A reference architecture and solution library covering the recurring institutional problems we intend to sell against, reusable by a seller without you Surviving enterprise architecture and information security review at multiple institutions, with the objection log and the answers written down and reused Product feedback that changes the roadmap, traced to named deals What you contribute to: Establishing Zeta's right to play, measured by the number of qualified institutions that reach technical evaluation, and by inclusion in competitive RFPs and shortlists we were not previously invited to Winning technical evaluations, proofs of concept, and bake-offs in competitive situations Direct technical contribution to closing at least one seven-figure ARR contract, with a technically qualified pipeline behind it that has cleared architecture review Experience and Qualifications : 12+ years of experience across technology and commercial roles, combining more than one of software development and engineering, product management, pre-sales, and customer success – ideally in a banking tech company Substantial experience selling technology into banks or credit unions in the US, with a track record of carrying deals through enterprise architecture, information security, and procurement review Breadth across the bank technology stack: core, deposits, payments, cards, lending, and digital channels, with genuine hands-on depth in at least two of them Experience with core or platform migration and coexistence in a live institution, from either side of the table, is strongly preferred A degree in computer science or engineering is essential Skills: Technical breadth with depth : command of the architecture, APIs, events, and data model of cloud-native banking platforms, across enough of the stack to assemble one proposition out of several of them Architectural judgment : design a target state, sequence the path to it, and defend both against an institution's own architects Coexistence design : knowing what can run in parallel, what has to move together, and how to say so to a bank that wants a single date On the fly solutioning : understand the need, connect the dots, and solve live when the question lands mid-call Sales acumen : knowing where a deal actually is , and the patience for evaluations measured in quarters that change sponsors halfway through Communication : presenting technical concepts to non-technical audiences, and holding your own with engineers Presentation and public speaking : a confident presenter in customer meetings, conferences, and analyst briefings Ownership : the agency to thrive in a 0 to 1 motion, with no team beneath you yet and priorities that move