Solutions Architect - SLED (East)

An overview of this role

As a SLED Solutions Architect, you'll be a trusted technical advisor to State, Local, and Education customers in every state east of the Mississippi River: state agencies, counties, cities, special districts, community colleges, and public, private, and research universities. These organizations deliver services residents and students rely on every day, often with lean IT teams, aging systems, fixed fiscal-year budgets, and growing cybersecurity threats.

You'll show them how GitLab's DevSecOps platform and AI capabilities, including the GitLab Duo Agent Platform, help them modernize legacy applications, protect sensitive resident and student data, meet state and sector compliance requirements, and do more with the staff they have. You'll own the technical evaluation and validation stages of the sales cycle, guide customers through proofs of concept and value, and translate platform capabilities into outcomes that agency leaders, CIOs, CISOs, and procurement officers can defend in a budget request or an RFP evaluation.

You'll partner closely with SLED account executives, channel partners, and systems integrators, provide technical guidance from first conversation through successful deployment, and bring the voice of the SLED customer back into Product, Sales, and Marketing.

Location and travel: The territory covers all states east of the Mississippi River. The candidate must reside in the Northeast part of the United States. This role requires up to 50% travel.

What you'll do

• Engage SLED customers onsite and remotely, from state capitals to university campuses, with tailored demos, technical presentations, and hands-on workshops that tie GitLab to their mission.
• Partner with SLED account executives to shape account strategies that align with each customer's fiscal year budget cycle, legislative appropriations, IT modernization plans, and grant or federal pass through funding.
• Own the technical evaluation process, including proof of concept (POC) and proof of value (POV) design and delivery, and provide technical responses for RFIs, RFPs, RFQs, and security questionnaires.
• Support purchases made through cooperative purchasing agreements and statewide contract vehicles by working with channel and reseller partners.
• Guide customers through state and sector security requirements, such as GovRAMP and NIST frameworks, and show how GitLab's built in security, auditability, and deployment options reduce compliance burden.
• Help agencies and institutions modernize legacy and mainframe applications, such as unemployment insurance, tax, DMV, benefits, and student information systems, using GitLab and AI-assisted development to lower risk and offset shrinking pools of legacy skilled staff.
• Advise customers on adopting AI responsibly, including the GitLab Duo Agent Platform, in line with state AI policies, governance boards, and data privacy requirements.
• Lead the creation of Customer Success Plans that capture technical success criteria and handoff details, ensuring a smooth path to deployment and adoption, often for IT teams with limited capacity.
• Work alongside Account Executives to build data driven business cases that quantify delivery bottlenecks, giving customers a defensible basis for budget requests and clear evidence of return on taxpayer investment.
• Build relationships with CIOs, CISOs, agency directors, enterprise architects, faculty, research computing leaders, and procurement officers so they become advocates for GitLab, including across agencies and campuses that share services.
• Collaborate with systems integrators and state IT shared-services organizations to scale GitLab adoption across multiple agencies, local governments, or campuses.
• Serve as the SLED customer advocate internally, channeling feedback on procurement, compliance, and deployment needs to Product, Sales, and Marketing.
• Stay current on GitLab and related technologies, and create reusable SLED demos, reference architectures, and assets for customers and partners.

What you'll bring

• Background in technical pre-sales, consulting, or IT roles serving state agencies, local governments, or public, private, and research universities, where you guided customers through evaluations and solution design.
• Working knowledge of how SLED organizations buy technology: RFP and RFI cycles, cooperative purchasing agreements, statewide contracts, fiscal-year budgeting, and the role of resellers and systems integrators.
• Hands-on experience using GitLab and familiarity with modern software development and operations practices, such as CI/CD, DevSecOps, and automation.
• Experience with cloud, hybrid, and self-managed deployments in regulated environments, including government cloud regions, and an understanding of data residency and sovereignty concerns.
• Familiarity with security and compliance frameworks common in SLED, such as GovRAMP and NIST SP 800-53.
• Ability to connect technical solutions to mission outcomes, such as resident service delivery, cyber resilience, cost avoidance, and workforce efficiency, and to advise senior stakeholders on tradeoffs and options.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills, including presenting to both technical teams and non-technical leaders such as agency heads, procurement officers, and university administrators.
• Openness to learning, seeking feedback, and building new skills, including familiarity with GitLab's Solutions Architect handbook and related resources.

Nice to have

• Prior experience working in or for state or local government IT, or a university IT or research computing organization.
• Experience with legacy or mainframe modernization programs.
• Familiarity with AI governance practices in the public sector, such as AI use-case inventories, acceptable-use policies, and risk assessments.

About the team

The SLED Solutions Architect role is part of GitLab's Public Sector Solutions Architect team, a group of trusted technical advisors who help government and education customers understand, evaluate, and adopt the GitLab DevSecOps platform. The team is distributed and collaborates asynchronously across time zones using GitLab and our handbook-first practices to share knowledge, reusable examples, and best practices.

On the SLED team, you'll help customers solve challenges unique to state, local, and education organizations: protecting resident and student data, modernizing mission-critical legacy systems, buying through public procurement processes, and stretching limited IT staff and budgets. You'll also bring SLED customer insights back to GitLab to shape product direction.

Originally posted on Himalayas