Edtech.com's Summary

Blackbaud is hiring a Solution Architect, Customer Success & Lifecycle Platforms for a remote role in the United States.

This is a SAFe Solution Architect role aligned to the Implement to Renew (I2R) value stream, defining the technology strategy that powers the customer journey after the sale, including onboarding, success, adoption, health monitoring, renewals, and advocacy. The architect owns and evolves architecture strategy for these platforms, sets standards and governance across multiple Agile Release Trains, and holds architecture review authority over designs produced by teams they do not manage. This is an internal enterprise architecture role with no customer-facing or sales-support responsibilities.

Candidates need 12+ years of industry experience, including 8+ years in internal enterprise solution or enterprise architecture roles, plus 3+ years working in Agile/SAFe environments with cross-team delivery scope; a SAFe Solution Architect certification is a strong differentiator. The starting base pay is $133,700-$173,800 USD per year.

Solution Architect, Customer Success & Lifecycle Platforms Full Description

About the Role

Blackbaud is seeking an experienced SAFe Solution Architect aligned to the Implement to Renew (I2R) value stream to help shape the technology strategy that powers the customer journey after the sale. In this highly visible enterprise architecture role, you will define and evolve solutions that support customer onboarding, success, adoption, health monitoring, renewals, and advocacy. Working across business and technology teams, you'll create scalable architecture patterns, integration strategies, and platform roadmaps that enable a seamless customer experience while helping drive customer retention, product adoption, and long-term growth. This is a strategic architecture role focused on defining the vision, standards, and technical direction for customer lifecycle technology. You will partner closely with product, engineering, customer success, sales, and marketing teams to turn business objectives into enterprise-scale solutions.

This role operates at the SAFe Solution Train level, above the Agile Release Train with no sprint commitments, no feature backlog, and no delivery team to delegate architecture work to. You will produce architecture artifacts directly and personally for an established platform ecosystem with existing integrations, accumulated technical debt, and competing modernization priorities. Your stakeholders are internal business and technology leaders. This role has no customer-facing or sales-support responsibilities.

What You'll Be Doing

Own and evolve the architecture strategy for customer onboarding, success, adoption, renewal, and advocacy platforms.
Design scalable solutions that improve customer intelligence, product adoption, customer health visibility, and retention outcomes — measured by your business stakeholders through customer health scores, net revenue retention, and adoption rates.
Partner with Customer Success, Product, Sales, Marketing, and Operations leaders to translate business goals into technical roadmaps and architecture plans.
Lead architecture for customer success platforms, CRM ecosystems, product analytics, customer communities, education platforms, and related customer engagement technologies — defining how data and events move between these systems, not within any single one.
Develop architecture artifacts including reference architectures, architecture decision records (ADRs), non-functional requirements (NFRs), and capability roadmaps.
Drive modern integration practices through API-first design, event-driven architecture, and real-time customer data flows.
Promote innovative AI and data-driven capabilities that enhance customer experiences, operational efficiency, and business insights.
Own architectural alignment across multiple Agile Release Trains — establishing standards and governance mechanisms that cross-functional teams are accountable to, participating actively in Architecture Sync, PI Planning, System Demos, and Inspect and Adapt events, and holding architecture review authority over designs produced by teams you do not manage.
Identify and mitigate technical, security, privacy, and data governance risks while supporting enterprise compliance requirements.
Collaborate with enterprise and solution architects across the organization to ensure interoperability, scalability, and long-term platform health.

Who This Role Is Designed For

This role is the right fit if you have built your career as an internal enterprise architect, someone whose primary stakeholders are business and technology leaders inside the organization, not external clients or prospects. The right candidate defines the technical vision that engineering teams implement; they do not implement it themselves. More specifically, this role is designed for architects who:

Have spent the majority of their career in internal enterprise or product organizations — not in consulting, professional services, or customer-facing solutions engineering — and measure their influence by the standards and governance outcomes they drive internally.
Produce architecture artifacts — ADRs, reference architectures, NFR sets, capability models — personally and directly, rather than directing others to produce them on their behalf.
Have designed integrations and event flows across multiple platform categories rather than building deep expertise within a single platform or vendor ecosystem.
Measure success through business outcomes like customer health scores, net revenue retention, and adoption rates — not through delivery throughput, system uptime, or sales metrics.
Are comfortable with the authority and accountability that comes from defining standards that cross-functional teams they do not manage are expected to follow.

What We'll Want You to Have

12+ years of industry experience, with 8+ years in internal enterprise solution or enterprise architecture roles — not customer-facing, consulting, or implementation architecture — owning cross-team architectural decisions and governance outcomes.
Three or more years of experience in Agile or SAFe environments with cross-team delivery scope — contributing to program-level planning, cross-functional architecture governance, and alignment across more than one team or ART. SAFe Solution Architect certification is a strong differentiator. Candidates who have practiced Agile at squad level only are unlikely to find this role a match.
Proven experience designing enterprise-scale solutions across customer success, CRM, analytics, and customer lifecycle platforms, with a strong understanding of onboarding, adoption, customer health, retention, and renewal processes.
Expertise in modern integration patterns, including API-first architectures, event-driven design, real-time data pipelines, microservices, and cloud-native platforms.
Demonstrated ability to produce personally authored architecture deliverables such as architecture decision records (ADRs), reference architectures, solution blueprints, capability roadmaps, and non-functional requirements (NFRs). Directing others to produce these artifacts does not meet this requirement.
Architecture experience spanning multiple distinct platform categories within the post-sale customer lifecycle — including customer success, product analytics, CRM, customer community, customer education, and revenue intelligence. Depth in a single platform category, regardless of seniority, does not meet the breadth requirement of this role.
Experience leveraging data, AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, customer intelligence, or Customer 360 capabilities to improve customer outcomes and business performance.
Strong communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills, with the ability to translate complex technical decisions into business outcomes and drive alignment across teams without direct authority.

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Blackbaud powers social impact through purpose‑driven technology and responsible AI. Guided by our Intelligence for Good® vision, we're building a culture where innovation, trust, and human expertise come together to help organizations make a greater difference in the world.

Blackbaud is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and is committed to maintaining a diverse and inclusive work environment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, physical or mental disability, age, or veteran status or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law.The starting base pay is $133,700.00 to $173,800.00. Blackbaud may pay more or less based on employee qualifications, market value, Company finances, and other operational considerations.

Benefits Include:

Medical, dental, and vision insurance
Remote-flexible workforce
Wellness Programs
401(k) program with employer match
Flexible paid time off
Generous Parental Leave
Donations for Doers
Pet insurance, legal and identity protection
Tuition reimbursement program

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