1. What is a Solutions Architect at Andela?

As an AI Solutions Architect at Andela, you are at the forefront of two massive industry shifts: the evolution of global hiring and the acceleration of software development through generative AI. You serve as the critical bridge between complex customer needs and Andela’s vast, global delivery capabilities. In this high-impact, 0-to-1 role within the AI Solutions Incubation team, you are not just designing systems; you are actively shaping how modern enterprises leverage the Andela Talent Cloud to build scalable, AI-driven solutions.

Your impact extends directly to the business's bottom line and the success of our clients. By embedding yourself in customer engagements, you will drive technical discovery, architect custom solutions, and build hands-on proof-of-concepts (POCs). Securing the "technical win" is your primary mandate, ensuring that clients have complete confidence in Andela’s ability to deliver robust Application Development, Cloud, and AI/ML projects up to 33% faster.

This position requires a unique blend of strategic vision and scrappy execution. You will enjoy significant executive visibility and the opportunity to influence a $1M-$2M pipeline within your first six months. Expect a fast-paced, mission-driven environment where your technical credibility, pre-sales acumen, and deep understanding of modern cloud and AI architectures will directly empower top global technologists from over 135 countries.

2. Common Interview Questions

While the exact questions you face will depend on your interviewer and the specific client domains you might support, the following represent the core patterns evaluated at Andela. Use these to practice structuring your thoughts, rather than memorizing answers.

System Architecture & AI Solutions

This category tests your ability to design scalable, modern systems and your understanding of how to practically implement AI technologies within enterprise environments.

• Design a scalable architecture for a global talent marketplace that needs to support real-time video interviews and asynchronous messaging.
• How would you architect a secure RAG system for a financial services client that cannot send proprietary data to public LLM APIs?
• Walk me through how you decide between a microservices architecture and a monolithic approach for an early-stage startup client.
• Explain how you would set up a CI/CD pipeline and container orchestration for a team of 50 distributed engineers.
• What are the primary bottlenecks you anticipate when integrating a legacy on-premise database with a modern cloud-native application?

Pre-Sales & Customer Discovery

These questions evaluate your consultative approach, your ability to handle objections, and how you secure the technical win during the sales cycle.

• Tell me about a time you had to explain a highly complex technical architecture to a non-technical C-level executive.
• How do you approach a discovery call with a client who only has a vague idea of their problem and no documented requirements?
• Describe a situation where a client pushed back heavily on your proposed technical solution. How did you negotiate and align?
• Walk me through your process for scoping the size and composition of an engineering team needed for a 6-month digital transformation project.
• How do you handle a scenario where the sales team has promised a timeline or feature set that you know is technically unfeasible?

Behavioral & Leadership

Aligned with Andela’s core values, these questions probe your ego, ownership, and ability to operate as a servant leader in a fast-paced environment.

• Tell me about a time you realized you were wrong about a major technical decision. How did you handle it and communicate it to the team?
• Describe a situation where you had to roll up your sleeves and write code to save a failing project, even though you were acting in a leadership capacity.
• Give an example of how you broke down silos between the pre-sales engineering team and the post-sales delivery team.
• Tell me about a time you proactively identified a broken internal process and took ownership of fixing it.
• How do you actively solicit and incorporate critical feedback from your peers and clients?

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3. Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Preparing for the Solutions Architect interview at Andela requires a strategic balance of technical depth, customer empathy, and leadership demonstration. You should approach your preparation by focusing on the core competencies our hiring teams evaluate.

Customer-Facing Technical Acumen – This evaluates your ability to translate ambiguous business pain points into structured technical solutions. Interviewers will look for your executive presence, how you map workflows, and your capability to secure technical wins during pre-sales engagements. You can demonstrate strength here by sharing past experiences where your technical proposals directly influenced revenue or closed deals.

Architecture and POC Execution – As a hands-on role, you are expected to fly high with strategy and dive deep into the code. This criterion tests your full-stack engineering, cloud architecture (AWS, GCP, Azure), and ability to build production-quality proof-of-concepts. Be prepared to discuss how you rapidly prototype solutions, integrate with legacy systems, and apply AI/ML fundamentals like LLMs and RAG.

Exceptional Leadership & Values – Andela deeply values its culture. We look for "player-coaches" who exhibit a low-ego, servant-leadership mentality. Interviewers will assess your "one team" mindset, your hunger for feedback, and your ownership of problems. Showcasing how you share credit, take accountability, and break down silos will strongly differentiate you.

Business Problem Solving – You must prove that you are not just a functional technical expert, but a strategic business partner. We evaluate your ability to view technology through the lens of business value. Candidates excel here by framing their architectural decisions around ROI, time-to-market, and customer success metrics.

4. Interview Process Overview

The interview process for the Solutions Architect role at Andela is designed to be rigorous, highly interactive, and reflective of the actual day-to-day work you will do with our clients. Because this role sits at the intersection of pre-sales, architecture, and engineering, you will meet with cross-functional leaders, including the Head of AI Solutions Incubation, technical peers, and business stakeholders. The process moves efficiently but demands a high level of preparation for both technical deep-dives and customer-facing simulations.

You should expect the process to heavily emphasize your practical abilities over theoretical knowledge. A defining feature of our evaluation is the presentation or case study round, where you will be asked to scope a realistic customer problem, design an architecture, and explain how you would build a POC to win the client's trust. The tone throughout will be collaborative; interviewers want to see how you take feedback, iterate on your ideas, and communicate complex concepts to non-technical executives.

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This visual timeline outlines the typical stages of your interview journey, from the initial recruiter screen to the final leadership and values alignment interviews. You should use this to pace your preparation, ensuring you are ready for technical architecture discussions early on and polished for the customer presentation in the later stages. Keep in mind that while the core steps remain consistent, the specific focus of the technical deep-dive may adapt based on your unique domain expertise.

5. Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

Solutions Discovery & Scoping

As a pre-sales technical leader, your ability to uncover the root cause of a customer's problem is paramount. This area evaluates your consultative skills, your executive presence, and your structured problem-solving approach. Strong performance means you don't just take feature requests; you map entire workflows, document complex technical environments, and assess the feasibility of potential solutions before writing a single line of code.

Be ready to go over:

• Workflow Mapping – How you visualize and document a client's current state versus their desired future state.
• Pain Point Identification – Techniques you use to gently probe stakeholders and uncover hidden technical or business bottlenecks.
• Feasibility Assessment – How you determine if a solution is viable within the constraints of time, budget, and existing infrastructure.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Navigating highly regulated environments (e.g., Healthcare, FinTech compliance) during the discovery phase.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through a time you led a discovery session with a skeptical enterprise client. How did you uncover their true technical pain points?"
• "A client wants to implement a generative AI solution but has highly fragmented, unstructured data. How do you scope this engagement?"
• "Describe a scenario where a customer's requested architecture was not feasible. How did you pivot the conversation and propose an alternative?"

Solution Architecture & Design

Once the problem is scoped, you must design a scalable, secure, and modern architecture. We evaluate your deep experience in cloud platforms, system design, and API development. A strong candidate will seamlessly transition from high-level whiteboard diagrams to discussing the specific nuances of data engineering and microservices.

Be ready to go over:

• Cloud Infrastructure – Deep knowledge of AWS, GCP, or Azure, and when to leverage specific managed services.
• Data Engineering & APIs – Designing robust data pipelines and RESTful/GraphQL APIs that integrate cleanly with legacy enterprise systems.
• AI/ML Integration – Practical application of AI fundamentals, particularly designing architectures that incorporate LLMs, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and vector databases.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-cloud architectures and complex Kubernetes orchestration for globally distributed teams.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design an architecture for a real-time talent matching platform using AWS services and an LLM for semantic search."
• "How would you design a secure, highly available API gateway for a client transitioning from a monolith to microservices?"
• "Explain your approach to designing a RAG pipeline for a customer who needs to query proprietary internal documents securely."

Proof-of-Concept (POC) Development

At Andela, architects do not just draw diagrams; they build. This area tests your "player-coach" mentality and your full-stack engineering capabilities. You are evaluated on your ability to rapidly build working, production-quality POCs that integrate with customer systems. Strong performance looks like scrappy, efficient coding combined with DevOps best practices (CI/CD, Docker).

Be ready to go over:

• Full-Stack Engineering – Your ability to write clean, functional code across the stack to bring an idea to life quickly.
• DevOps & Deployment – Setting up automated CI/CD pipelines and containerizing your POCs with Docker or Kubernetes.
• Iterative Development – How you incorporate rapid customer feedback to tweak and improve the POC during the pre-sales cycle.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Writing custom integrations for niche or proprietary enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to build a technical POC under a tight deadline to win a deal. What shortcuts did you take, and what did you refuse to compromise on?"
• "How do you ensure that the POCs you build can be seamlessly handed off to a delivery team for production scaling?"
• "Describe your process for containerizing a full-stack application and setting up a basic CI/CD pipeline for a client demo."

Exceptional Leadership & Culture Fit

Your technical skills will get you in the door, but your alignment with Andela’s core values will secure the offer. We evaluate your ego, your willingness to take ownership, and your ability to act as a servant leader. A strong candidate demonstrates a "one team mentality," actively seeks out critical feedback, and frames every technical decision around solving a core business problem.

Be ready to go over:

• Low Ego & Servant Leadership – Sharing credit with the team and taking the blame when things go wrong; embracing better ideas from others.
• Owner, Not Renter – Identifying organizational or process gaps and taking the initiative to fix them without being asked.
• Player-Coach Mentality – Balancing high-level strategic thinking with a willingness to roll up your sleeves and engage in the details.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Leading cross-cultural, fully remote, globally distributed technical teams through periods of high ambiguity.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you strongly advocated for a technical direction, but a peer had a better idea. How did you handle it?"
• "Describe a situation where you saw a problem outside your direct responsibilities and took ownership to fix it."
• "How do you balance the need to fly high and create strategy with the necessity of diving low into the technical details?"

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6. Key Responsibilities

As an AI Solutions Architect, your day-to-day work is highly dynamic, bridging the gap between pre-sales strategy and technical execution. You will spend the majority of your time (60-70%) in the pre-sales phase. This involves leading discovery calls with prospective clients, mapping their workflows, and designing custom architectures that solve their specific business problems. You will frequently create technical diagrams, develop proposals, and present these solutions to both technical and non-technical executives to secure the technical win.

A significant portion of your pre-sales effort will be hands-on. You will spend 20-25% of your overall time building working Proof-of-Concepts (POCs). This requires you to write production-quality code, integrate your prototypes with the customer’s existing systems, and iterate rapidly based on their feedback. Your goal is to build customer confidence in Andela’s capabilities by proving that the proposed architecture works in practice, not just on paper.

Once the technical win is secured, you will transition into delivery handoff and support (20-30% of your time). You will scope the size and composition of the Andela delivery team required to build the full solution. You are responsible for transferring all technical and business context to this team, supporting the project kickoff, and monitoring critical phases to ensure alignment with your original architecture. Finally, you will dedicate 5-10% of your time to a product feedback loop—identifying solution gaps, proposing new Solution Packages, and sharing competitive intelligence with internal Andela teams.

7. Role Requirements & Qualifications

To thrive as a Solutions Architect at Andela, you need a robust blend of deep engineering experience and polished customer-facing skills. We look for candidates who have transitioned from senior engineering roles into strategic, pre-sales architecture positions.

Must-have skills and qualifications:

• 5 to 10 years of software engineering experience, with a strong foundation in full-stack development.
• 3+ years in customer-facing technical roles, with a proven track record in pre-sales and securing technical wins.
• Deep expertise in at least one major Cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and overall System Architecture.
• Hands-on capabilities in API Development, Data Engineering, and DevOps practices (CI/CD, Docker/Kubernetes).
• Exceptional executive presence, strong communication, and structured problem-solving skills.
• A demonstrated "player-coach" mentality and a low-ego approach to teamwork.

Nice-to-have skills and qualifications:

• Practical experience with AI solutions, specifically involving Large Language Models (LLM) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
• Prior experience working in top consulting firms, boutique tech consultancies, or fast-paced startup/scale-up environments.
• Deep domain expertise in specific industries such as FinTech, SaaS, or Healthcare.
• Relevant industry certifications (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect).

8. Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How technical is the interview process for a Solutions Architect at Andela? The process is highly technical, but always grounded in business reality. You will be expected to discuss cloud architecture, API design, and DevOps in depth. Because this is a hands-on role, you must also demonstrate your ability to write production-quality code for POCs, so expect technical deep-dives that test both your high-level design and low-level execution.

Q: What differentiates a successful candidate from an average one? Successful candidates perfectly balance the "player" and "coach" mentalities. An average candidate might design a great system on a whiteboard; a standout candidate designs the system, builds the POC, effectively pitches it to a non-technical executive, and seamlessly hands the context over to a delivery team. Your ability to tie technology directly to business problem-solving is the ultimate differentiator.

Q: How much preparation time is typical for the presentation/case study round? Candidates typically receive the case study prompt a few days to a week before their presentation. You should expect to spend several hours analyzing the prompt, designing the architecture, and building out a clear, compelling slide deck. Focus heavily on the "why" behind your technical choices, not just the "what."

Q: What is the working style and culture like for this role? Andela is a remote-first, globally distributed company. The culture is highly autonomous, mission-driven, and collaborative. For this specific role within the AI Solutions Incubation team, expect a fast-paced, startup-within-a-scale-up environment (a 0-to-1 opportunity) where low ego, proactive ownership, and a hunger for feedback are essential for survival and success.

Q: What are the expectations around pipeline influence? As a pre-sales technical leader, you are expected to directly impact revenue. The role targets influencing $1M-$2M in pipeline within your first six months. This means your technical proposals and POCs must be compelling enough to close substantial enterprise deals.

9. Other General Tips

• Embrace the "Player-Coach" Mindset: Throughout your interviews, explicitly highlight instances where you designed the overarching strategy but also got into the weeds to unblock a team or build a prototype. Andela does not want architects who only pontificate; they want builders.
• Focus on Business Value: Never describe a technology in a vacuum. Whether you are discussing Kubernetes or an LLM, always tie it back to how it solves a specific business problem, saves money, or accelerates time-to-market for the customer.

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• Showcase Your "One Team" Mentality: Pre-sales can sometimes be at odds with delivery. Highlight your ability to create smooth handoffs, set realistic expectations during the sales cycle, and support the delivery team post-sale. Siloed thinking is a major red flag.
• Demonstrate Low Ego: Be prepared to talk openly about your failures and mistakes. Use the "Great listener, hungry for feedback" value to your advantage by asking thoughtful questions at the end of your interviews and showing genuine interest in how Andela operates.

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• Master the Remote Presentation: Since Andela is a remote-first company, your virtual executive presence is heavily scrutinized. Ensure your lighting, audio, and screen-sharing setup are flawless for your presentation round.

10. Summary & Next Steps

Joining Andela as an AI Solutions Architect is a unique opportunity to shape the future of global talent and generative AI software development. You will be stepping into a high-visibility, 0-to-1 role where your architectural decisions and customer-facing skills will directly drive millions in revenue and empower technologists around the world. The work is challenging, fast-paced, and deeply rewarding for leaders who thrive on solving complex business problems with cutting-edge technology.

To succeed in your interviews, focus your preparation on demonstrating a seamless blend of pre-sales savvy and hands-on technical execution. Review your past projects through the lens of Andela’s core values—ensure your stories highlight your low ego, your ownership mentality, and your ability to act as both a strategic coach and a scrappy player. Practice articulating complex cloud and AI architectures clearly to non-technical stakeholders, and be ready to prove how you build robust POCs under pressure.

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Understanding the compensation landscape is a key part of your preparation. The data above reflects the typical salary range and components for this level of seniority. Use this insight to align your expectations and confidently navigate the offer stage, keeping in mind that total compensation often scales with your ability to influence the pre-sales pipeline.

You have the technical foundation and the leadership potential to excel in this process. Approach every conversation with curiosity, confidence, and a collaborative spirit. For more detailed interview insights, peer experiences, and preparation resources, be sure to explore Dataford. Good luck—you are ready to showcase your brilliance and help change the world.