AEM Pre-sales Principal architect - Director

About This Role

15 to 20 years of experience

Skills: AEM , Content management , Content strategy , DAM , Presales, Solution consulting, Enterprise architecture

Director, Principal Solution Architect

Company: Bounteous

Practice: India · Adobe Experience Practice

Focus: AEM · Content Supply Chain · Agentic Customer Experience Orchestration

Level: Director – Principal Solution Architect

Experience: 15–20 years

Locations: Bengaluru · Hyderabad · Chennai

About the Role

Bounteous is hiring a Director - Principal Solution Architect to anchor our most complex Adobe Experience Manager, content-supply-chain, and agentic customer-experience-orchestration engagements for enterprise clients across India and our global accounts.

An architecture leader in equal measure — deep technologist, trusted executive advisor, and pursuit leader — sitting between the CXO's ambition and the teams that make it real. As an Adobe Platinum Partner and Anthropic Preferred Services Partner, Bounteous is investing heavily in agentic, AI-native experience delivery, and this role is central to it.

What You'll Own

Client Advisory & Strategic Engagement

• Advise C-level stakeholders — CMO, CIO, CTO, CDO — translating business objectives into Adobe Experience Cloud and customer-experience-orchestration roadmaps.
• Lead discovery, architecture envisioning, and digital-transformation strategy sessions with client leadership.
• Provide thought leadership on DXP, personalization, journey orchestration, and the shift to agentic CX.

Enterprise Architecture & Technical Depth

• Own end-to-end enterprise architecture for large, multi-brand, multi-geo programs — integrating AEM with CDP, commerce, DAM, personalization, analytics, and search.
• Formulate complex, defensible blueprints across content architecture, headless/hybrid, composable and API-first patterns, security, performance, scalability, and TCO.
• Define integration and data strategy — CRM, ERP, data lakes/warehouses, martech/adtech — enabling identity, segmentation, activation, and real-time omnichannel personalization.
• Set the technical bar and defend the hard trade-offs — build vs. configure, headless vs. hybrid, composable vs. monolith — to client enterprise architects.

Adobe Experience Manager & Content Supply Chain Mastery

• Deep, hands-on expertise across every generation of AEM — classic 6.x through AEM as a Cloud Service; Sites, Assets, Forms, Universal Editor.
• Command of Edge Delivery Services (EDS) — document-based and Universal Editor authoring, block architecture, and Core Web Vitals-first delivery.
• Architect the full Adobe content supply chain — AEM Assets and Content Hub, Workfront, GenStudio for Performance Marketing, and Firefly / Firefly Services (working knowledge).
• Speak fluently to the entire Adobe ecosystem — AEP, Real-Time CDP, Journey Optimizer, Target, Analytics/CJA, Commerce — even without hands-on depth in every product.

Agentic AI & Customer Experience Orchestration

• Architect agentic CX on AEP Agent Orchestrator and CX Enterprise — coordinating the content family of agents across content, personalization, and journeys.
• Design open, standards-based agent architecture using MCP and Agent2Agent — including MCP-based integration that brings Claude (Anthropic) into Adobe's Agent Orchestrator.
• Bring working command of Adobe's GenAI tooling — Firefly, Firefly Services, GenStudio — with a clear view of where AI creates measurable value versus hype.
• Point to real AI-powered PoCs and client work you've led, naming specific benefits — cycle-time, quality, personalization lift, or cost.

Decoding CX Vision, Scoping & Estimation

• Decode CX and transformation objectives from the CXO's mind into a structured value hierarchy.
• Translate CXO goals into epics, epics into user stories, and stories into clearly scoped, estimable workstreams — traceable from outcome to build.
• Turn scoping into effort calculators, converting scope, assumptions, and complexity drivers into repeatable, defensible estimation models.
• Optimize effort calculators with agentic AI and productivity data, folding delivery telemetry and AI-driven acceleration back into sharper, continuously improving estimates.
• Prepare credible, defensible estimates — effort, team shape, timeline, and cost — grounded in delivery reality, not optimism.

Roadmaps, Proposals & Pursuit Leadership

• Build phased implementation roadmaps balancing quick wins, foundational investment, and long-horizon transformation.
• Author complete proposals and RFP/RFI responses — exec summary, solution architecture, delivery approach, team model, estimates, timeline, risks, commercials.
• Craft exec summaries a CMO and marketers can rally behind — outcome-led, value-anchored, jargon-free — with solution detail that withstands CIO and enterprise-architect scrutiny.
• Lead and defend proposals in orals and architecture reviews, adapting the narrative live to the room.

Practice & Team Leadership

• Mentor and grow a bench of solution architects and technical leads across our India delivery centres.
• Codify reusable assets — architecture accelerators, effort calculators, and estimation frameworks that lift the practice's win rate and delivery quality.

Platform & Technology Expertise

• Adobe Experience Manager (deep): All versions, classic 6.x through AEMaaCS; Sites, Assets, Forms, Universal Editor. Many years hands-on.
• Edge Delivery Services (EDS): Document-based and Universal Editor authoring, block architecture, Core Web Vitals-first delivery.
• Content supply chain: AEM Content Hub, Workfront, GenStudio for Performance Marketing, Firefly / Firefly Services (working knowledge).
• Agentic AI: AEP Agent Orchestrator and CX Enterprise, the content family of agents, MCP and Agent2Agent, MCP-based Claude (Anthropic) integration.
• Broader Adobe ecosystem (fluency): AEP / Real-Time CDP, Journey Optimizer, Target, Analytics/CJA, Commerce — able to speak to the full stack.
• Enterprise architecture: Headless/hybrid, composable/MACH, API and event-driven integration, microservices, cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Estimation: Scoping-to-effort-calculator modelling, tuned with agentic-AI productivity data.
• Nice to have: AEM Guides (structured/DITA) knowledge; expertise not required. Ways of working: Agile/SAFe, EA governance, DevOps/CI-CD.

Experience & Qualifications

• 15–20 years in enterprise digital and experience technology, with a substantial, hands-on record architecting AEM-centred solutions over many years.
• Ownership of large, complex enterprise architectures for global brands, including integration and data strategy.
• Proven success authoring and defending winning proposals and estimates in competitive pursuits and RFP/RFI cycles.
• Fluency turning executive CX ambition into epics, stories, scope, effort calculators, roadmaps, and estimates.
• Hands-on with AEM, EDS, and Assets; working knowledge of Firefly, Firefly Services, and GenStudio; able to speak to the whole Adobe ecosystem.
• Has built AI-powered PoCs and/or applied AI on client work, and can point to specific, realized benefits.
• Excellent executive presence — equally credible with CMOs, marketers, CIOs, and enterprise architects.
• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Preferred & Differentiating

• Adobe certifications (AEM Architect / Experience Cloud) and hands-on EDS delivery.
• Hands-on agentic AI and MCP architecture — integrating Claude / Anthropic or other models with Adobe's Agent Orchestrator.
• AEM Guides knowledge for structured/DITA programs (nice to have, not required).
• Principal- or Director-level experience at a leading systems integrator or digital experience agency, with multi-industry breadth.

Success in the First 6–12 Months

• Trusted architect on 2–3 marquee AEM / agentic-CX pursuits, with a measurable lift in win quality.
• An effort-calculator and estimation framework adopted across the India practice and tuned with agentic-AI productivity gains.
• A reference architecture for agentic CX — Agent Orchestrator with MCP-based Claude integration — that pursuits can reuse.
• A growing, mentored bench of solution architects across India delivery centres.