Forward Deployed Solutions Architect

Forward Deployed Solutions Architect Agentic Commerce Trust

Client: NA

Contract position

Remote (PST hours) - Preferred Pheonix

Role Summary:

We are looking for a highly experienced Forward Deployed Solutions Architect with strong hands-on expertise in LLM agent systems, identity, security, payments, and agentic commerce architectures .

This person will own the technical solution end-to-end, including architecture decisions, integration patterns, trust enforcement, partner discussions, threat modeling, and technical demonstrations.

The role will work closely with merchants and technology partners such as Anthropic, Google/UCP, Cloudflare, Visa, wallet providers, and other agentic-commerce ecosystem partners .

Key Responsibilities

• Design end-to-end architecture for trust, identity, and risk decisioning in agentic commerce ecosystems.
• Evaluate Anthropic runtime options including Messages API, Agent SDK, and Managed Agents .
• Identify trust enforcement and integration hook points across agent runtimes.
• Create Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), sequence diagrams, and reference architectures.
• Design:
  • Session identity binding
  • Approve / step-up / deny decisioning
  • Fail-open and fail-closed policies
  • Gateway verification for hosted agents
• Build loyalty-without-login architecture using UCP and protocol-agnostic middleware/header patterns.
• Design Verifiable Credential POCs covering issuer, wallet, presentation, and merchant verification.
• Create threat models and privacy-by-design architectures.
• Prepare merchant integration guides, demo runbooks, and technical documentation.
• Lead technical discussions and demos with merchants, partners, and external engineering teams.

Must-Have Skills

• 8+ years of experience in Solutions Architecture, Software Architecture, Platform Architecture, or similar roles.
• Strong hands-on coding/software engineering background.
• Recent 2025 2026 production experience with LLM/AI agent systems .
• Strong experience with AI agents using tools and external integrations.
• Hands-on knowledge of the Anthropic Claude ecosystem , including:
  • Messages API
  • Tool use
  • Prompt caching
  • Agent SDK
  • Managed Agents
• Strong understanding of Model Context Protocol (MCP) , including authenticated MCP servers.
• Strong identity/security knowledge:
  • OAuth 2.0
  • OIDC
  • JWT
  • JWKS
  • Message Signatures
• Experience with payment or checkout architectures.
• Knowledge of agentic-commerce protocols such as:
  • UCP
  • OpenAI ACP
  • AP2
  • KYA concepts
• Strong threat modeling and privacy-by-design experience.
• Ability to create strong ADRs, architecture diagrams, and sequence diagrams.
• Excellent client-facing and partner-facing communication skills.
• Experience leading technical workshops with external engineering teams.

Nice-to-Have Skills

• W3C Verifiable Credentials 2.0
• OID4VCI / OID4VP
• SD-JWT
• BBS+
• Fraud and risk decisioning platforms
• Cloudflare Workers
• CDN/edge architectures
• Forward Deployed Engineer or Forward Deployed Architect experience

Key Deliverables

• Architecture Decision Records
• Hook-point inventory
• Runtime comparison
• Threat models
• Reference architecture diagrams
• Merchant integration guides
• Demo runbooks
• Partner technical briefings
• Technical demonstrations