What is a Solutions Architect at Altruist?

As a Solutions Architect at Altruist, you are the critical bridge between our modern, cloud-based financial infrastructure and the independent financial advisors (RIAs) who rely on it. Altruist is on a mission to make financial advice better, more accessible, and more affordable. In this role, you directly enable that mission by helping large financial firms seamlessly integrate their existing systems with our cutting-edge custody and clearing platform.

Your impact will be felt across multiple teams and touchpoints. You will work closely with prospective clients to design scalable integration architectures, partner with our engineering teams to relay market needs, and ensure that our technical deployments are secure, compliant, and highly performant. The scale of the assets and data flowing through our systems means your architectural decisions carry significant weight and visibility.

Expect a role that is as strategic as it is technical. You will not just be writing scripts or answering API questions; you will be architecting the future of wealth management for our largest partners. If you thrive in complex, high-stakes environments and love translating deep technical concepts into clear business value, this role will be incredibly rewarding.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparation is the key to navigating our comprehensive interview process. We evaluate candidates not just on what they know, but on how they apply that knowledge to real-world financial technology challenges.

Focus your preparation on these key evaluation criteria:

Technical Architecture & System Design – This evaluates your ability to design secure, scalable, and resilient systems. Interviewers will look for your fluency in API integrations, data synchronization, and cloud architecture, specifically in how you connect external client systems to the Altruist platform.

Client-Facing Communication – As a Solutions Architect, you are a primary technical representative of Altruist. We evaluate your ability to distill complex architectural concepts into digestible, compelling narratives for both technical and non-technical stakeholders (like financial advisors or firm executives).

Problem-Solving & Adaptability – This measures how you navigate ambiguity. We look for candidates who can take a vague client requirement, ask the right clarifying questions, and structure a logical, step-by-step technical solution.

Culture & Cross-Functional Collaboration – You will be evaluated on your ability to work seamlessly alongside our sales, product, and engineering teams. We look for empathy, a collaborative spirit, and a strong alignment with our mission to democratize financial advice.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process for a Solutions Architect at Altruist is thorough and involves multiple touchpoints across different departments. Expect a total of 7 interview rounds. While this may sound extensive, the difficulty of the questions is generally considered standard for the industry; the length of the process is designed to ensure you get to meet the diverse cross-functional teams you will be collaborating with daily.

Your journey will begin with a standard recruiter phone screen, followed by a deeper technical and behavioral alignment conversation with the hiring manager. If successful, you will advance to a comprehensive cross-functional panel. This panel is broken down into several distinct sessions, allowing you to speak directly with engineering, product management, and customer-facing teams. Our interviewing philosophy emphasizes mutual discovery—we want to understand how you think on your feet, but we also want you to understand the exact dynamics of the teams you will be joining.

The visual timeline above outlines the progression from your initial recruiter screen through the final cross-functional panel stages. Use this to pace your preparation. Notice that the early stages focus heavily on your background and high-level architectural philosophy, while the later panel stages will test your ability to dive deep into specific integration scenarios and cross-team collaboration.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed, you need to understand exactly what our interviewers are looking for in each phase of the panel. Below are the primary evaluation areas you will encounter.

System Design and Integration Strategy

Because Altruist operates in the wealth management space, data integrity, security, and real-time synchronization are paramount. You will be evaluated on your ability to design robust integrations between our APIs and third-party CRM, reporting, or trading systems. Strong performance here means designing solutions that are not only technically sound but also account for edge cases, rate limits, and secure data transmission.

Be ready to go over:

• RESTful API Design & Webhooks – Understanding how to architect event-driven data flows and reliable API consumption.
• Data Security & Compliance – Navigating SOC2, PII protection, and secure authentication (OAuth, SAML) in a fintech context.
• System Resilience – Designing for fault tolerance, handling API failures, and implementing retry mechanisms.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Event sourcing, GraphQL integration strategies, and specific cloud-native messaging queues (Kafka, SQS).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through how you would design an integration that synchronizes millions of daily transaction records from our platform to a client's legacy portfolio management system."
• "How do you handle a scenario where a webhook fails to deliver a critical trade execution payload to a client?"
• "Design an architecture that allows a third-party application to securely authenticate and access specific user data without exposing underlying account credentials."

Stakeholder Management and Communication

A Solutions Architect must command the room. This area tests your ability to manage expectations, push back gracefully when a client asks for an impossible feature, and align technical deliverables with business timelines. Strong candidates demonstrate high emotional intelligence and the ability to pivot their communication style based on their audience.

Be ready to go over:

• Requirement Gathering – Techniques for extracting the true business need behind a client's technical request.
• Objection Handling – Managing scenarios where the Altruist platform does not currently support a requested feature.
• Cross-Functional Translation – Taking client feedback and turning it into actionable, well-scoped tickets for our internal engineering and product teams.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to explain a complex technical limitation to an angry or frustrated non-technical stakeholder."
• "How do you balance the immediate technical needs of a high-value prospect with the long-term roadmap of our product team?"
• "Walk us through a time you discovered a major flaw in a client's proposed architecture. How did you guide them toward a better solution?"

Behavioral and Culture Fit

We want to know how you operate under pressure and how you treat your peers. The cross-functional panel will assess your collaborative instincts. At Altruist, we value transparency, extreme ownership, and a bias for action.

Be ready to go over:

• Conflict Resolution – Navigating disagreements with internal teams (like sales over-promising a feature).
• Adaptability – Shifting gears when project requirements suddenly change.
• Mission Alignment – Demonstrating a genuine interest in improving the financial advisory space.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Describe a situation where you had to quickly learn a completely new technology to save a deal."
• "Tell me about a time you disagreed with an engineering team's approach to a client integration. How was it resolved?"
• "Why are you interested in the wealth tech space, and why Altruist specifically?"

Key Responsibilities

As a Solutions Architect at Altruist, your day-to-day work will be highly dynamic, split between client-facing consultations and deep technical problem-solving. You will serve as the primary technical advisor during the pre-sales process, working alongside our sales directors to prove the technical viability of the Altruist platform to large prospective RIAs. This involves leading white-boarding sessions, conducting API demonstrations, and architecting custom integration workflows.

Post-sale, your responsibility shifts to ensuring a smooth technical onboarding. You will project-manage the integration phase, writing technical documentation, providing code snippets or architectural diagrams, and troubleshooting complex API integration issues as clients build against our endpoints.

Internally, you will act as the voice of the customer. Because you are on the front lines seeing how clients use our platform, you will collaborate heavily with our Product and Engineering teams. You will synthesize client feedback, identify gaps in our current API offerings, and help shape the future technical roadmap of the company.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

To be competitive for the Solutions Architect position, you must bring a blend of deep technical expertise and polished client-facing skills.

• Must-have skills – 5+ years of experience in a Solutions Architecture, Sales Engineering, or Technical Account Management role. You must have a strong foundational understanding of modern web architectures, RESTful APIs, webhooks, and secure authentication protocols (OAuth2). Exceptional verbal and written communication skills are non-negotiable, as is the ability to manage complex, multi-stakeholder projects.
• Experience level – Mid-to-senior level. We expect you to have a proven track record of owning technical integrations for enterprise or mid-market clients, preferably in a B2B SaaS environment.
• Soft skills – High empathy, active listening, and the ability to maintain composure under pressure. You must be comfortable leading technical discovery calls and presenting to C-level executives.
• Nice-to-have skills – Previous experience in Fintech, wealth management, or working specifically with Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). Familiarity with financial data standards (like FIX protocol) or cloud certifications (AWS/GCP) will make your application stand out significantly.

Common Interview Questions

The questions below represent the types of challenges you will face during your interviews. While you should not memorize answers, you should use these to practice structuring your thoughts—particularly using the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for behavioral questions.

System Design & Technical Architecture

These questions test your ability to design integrations that are secure, scalable, and logical.

• How would you design a system to ingest and reconcile large batches of financial data overnight?
• Explain how OAuth2 works to a non-technical client who is worried about data security.
• What are the trade-offs between using webhooks versus polling for a real-time trading application?
• How do you ensure high availability and disaster recovery in a cloud-based integration?

Client-Facing & Scenario-Based

These questions evaluate your poise, communication, and strategic thinking during client interactions.

• A major prospective client wants to use our API in a way that violates our security best practices. How do you handle this conversation?
• Walk me through how you prepare for a technical discovery call with a new enterprise prospect.
• The sales team has promised a feature that does not exist to close a deal. You are brought in to start the integration. What is your next move?
• Pitch the technical value of a modern, API-first platform over a legacy, file-transfer-based system.

Behavioral & Cross-Functional

These questions assess your cultural alignment and how you work with internal teams.

• Tell me about a time you had to escalate a critical client issue to the engineering team. How did you ensure it got prioritized?
• Describe a project that failed. What was your role, and what did you learn?
• How do you balance your time between supporting active pre-sales deals and helping existing clients troubleshoot complex issues?

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long does the interview process typically take? The end-to-end process involves 7 touchpoints and typically takes 3 to 5 weeks from the initial recruiter screen to the final decision. Because the final stage is a cross-functional panel, coordinating schedules across multiple departments can sometimes extend the timeline.

Q: Is a background in finance or wealth management required? While highly beneficial, it is not strictly required. If you lack fintech experience, you must over-index on your technical integration skills, your ability to learn complex domains quickly, and your overall aptitude for B2B SaaS architecture.

Q: How deeply technical are the panel interviews? The interviews are of average difficulty for a standard Solutions Architect role. You will not be asked to write production-grade code on a whiteboard, but you will be expected to draw detailed architectural diagrams, understand API payloads, and discuss database concepts and security protocols in depth.

Q: What happens after the final panel interview? Following the panel, the hiring committee will convene to synthesize feedback from all 7 interviewers. This thorough debrief process means it can take some time to reach a final consensus.

Other General Tips

• Over-communicate your thought process: When given a system design prompt, do not jump straight to the solution. Spend the first few minutes asking clarifying questions about data volume, security requirements, and the client's end goal.
• Tailor your narrative: Remember that you are speaking to different personas in the panel. When talking to engineering, focus on scalability and technical constraints. When talking to sales or product, focus on business value and user experience.

• Showcase your adaptability: The financial technology landscape is heavily regulated and constantly shifting. Highlight past experiences where you successfully navigated strict compliance requirements or pivoted technical strategies mid-project.

• Master the whiteboard (or virtual equivalent): Be comfortable using tools like Lucidchart, Miro, or even a physical whiteboard to visually explain your architectural concepts. Visual communication is a core competency for this role.

Summary & Next Steps

Stepping into the Solutions Architect role at Altruist means taking on a position of immense influence. You will be at the forefront of modernizing the wealth management industry, empowering financial advisors with the technology they need to serve their clients better. The challenges you solve here—from complex data synchronization to high-stakes enterprise integrations—will directly drive the growth and success of the platform.

The compensation data above provides a benchmark for what you can expect in this market. When reviewing this, remember that total compensation for a Solutions Architect often includes a mix of base salary, performance bonuses, and equity, reflecting the high impact this role has on both pre-sales success and long-term client retention.

To succeed in your interviews, focus on demonstrating a balanced blend of technical depth and exceptional communication. Review your foundational knowledge of APIs, cloud architecture, and security protocols, but equally importantly, practice articulating those concepts simply and persuasively. Trust in your experience, lean into your problem-solving frameworks, and approach each conversation as a collaborative working session rather than a test. You can find additional interview insights and preparation materials on Dataford to further refine your strategy. You have the skills to excel—now it is time to show our team exactly how you can architect success at Altruist.