J-1 Visa Principal Solution Architect Jobs
Principal Solution Architect roles in the United States are accessible to international professionals through J-1 visa sponsorship, most commonly under the Trainee or Specialist program category. Designated sponsor organizations issue your DS-2019, while the hiring company serves as your host employer. No lottery or annual cap applies.
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Get Access To All JobsAbout Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 400,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About The Role
Are you looking for an opportunity to transform a business? Gusto is looking for a strategic, customer-focused leader to leverage customer feedback and operational key metrics to develop actionable insights and strategies that shape our product and service, and positively impact customer love. Working with the Product, Engineering, Design and Customer Experience teams, you will be expected to tackle both highly strategic and deeply operational initiatives to deliver value for customers and Gusto. You’ll be customer-obsessed, business-minded, strategic, detail-oriented, and highly creative. In this role, you'll help stand up the operational and service foundation for a new Gusto product, using both deep human judgment and emerging AI tools to move faster and make better decisions. If this sounds exciting to you, we’d love to connect!
About The Team
The Benefits Product Operations team at Gusto is made up of committed, creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to enable Benefits for all small and mid-sized businesses and their employees. We’re a highly cross-functional team focused on ensuring our product and service are co-designed and co-developed along the product lifecycle to deliver a best in class customer experience; Gusto is listening to, synthesizing and acting on customer and front-line team feedback; and that cross-functional teams are collaborating and swimming together to build the best version of Gusto for our customers.
Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day
- Shape and support product development and its integration into service strategy for existing customers across the product lifecycle, in collaboration with Engineering, Design, Product Management, and Customer Experience teams.
- Understand our product and end-to-end service experience and organizations in intimate detail, including internal and external pain points and feedback. Collaborate to ensure customer support considerations are integrated into broader company decisions.
- Lead and partner on product launches between Product Management and Customer Experience (CX) teams to ensure readiness and deliver insights post-launch to ensure a positive experience for customers and internal teams.
- Provide business insights and recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative data to influence strategy and operational design in both product and service roadmaps.
- Identify and drive cross-functional initiatives that will deliver value for customers and Gusto. Help develop and communicate a clear roadmap for enhancing service capabilities and experiences.
- Hypothesis-driven problem solving to drive our business.
- Contribute to advancing the Product Operations craft at Gusto and build AI fluency within the team:
- Model how to use AI tools to accelerate service design, insight synthesis, and agent-driven operational workflows.
- Identify and build AI-assisted operational workflows, including agents, to accelerate VoC synthesis, launch readiness monitoring, and cross-functional signal aggregation.
- Use AI tools to prototype service solutions and surface requirements faster, compressing the feedback loop between customer signal and product/service response — before full engineering investment.
Here’s What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of relevant work experience at growing startups in operating roles (i.e., biz ops/strategy roles, product operations, project/program management, and/or consulting):
- Experience scaling service strategy alongside growing SaaS products, including incubating products, building and managing product betas, and/or integrating new products into a scalable best-in-class service model.
- Highly adaptable and resilient to changes in business needs or requirements, with the ability to navigate challenges and make decisions even when information is incomplete.
- Demonstrated self-starter and organized problem-solver. Self-sufficient, resourceful, and bias for action towards continuous improvement.
- Experienced with managing a variety of cross-functional stakeholders on complex strategic initiatives, including influencing senior leaders in Product or Customer Experience orgs.
- Strong data literacy and results-orientation, with the ability to identify the right questions, interpret quantitative and qualitative signals, and translate findings into decisions — including comfort using AI-assisted tools for analysis and synthesis.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to effectively communicate complex subjects to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Demonstrated AI fluency in an operational and product context — comfort using AI tools to synthesize qualitative data, identify automation opportunities in service workflows, and building or directing AI agents to reduce manual operational lift:
- Experience prototyping with AI (e.g., Claude, Cursor, Codex or similar) is a plus.
- Experience with service design and/or service blueprinting.
- Experience working in the healthcare or benefits space (PEO, health insurance, etc.) is a plus; candidates with new product incubation experience in any complex regulated space are strongly encouraged to apply.
Compensation
- Our cash compensation amount for this role is $148,000/yr to $182,000/yr in Denver, and $167,000/yr to $217,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Location
Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
About Gusto
At Gusto, we're on a mission to grow the small business economy. We handle the hard stuff — payroll, health insurance, 401(k)s, and HR — so owners can focus on their craft and their customers. With teams in Denver, San Francisco, and New York, we support more than 400,000 small businesses nationwide and are building a workplace that reflects the people we serve. All full-time employees receive competitive base pay, benefits, and equity (RSUs) — because everyone who helps build Gusto should share in its success. Offer amounts are determined by role, level, and location. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy. AI is a fundamental part of how work gets done at Gusto. We expect all team members to actively engage with AI tools relevant to their role and grow their fluency as the technology evolves. AI experience requirements vary by role and will be assessed during the interview process.
About The Role
Are you looking for an opportunity to transform a business? Gusto is looking for a strategic, customer-focused leader to leverage customer feedback and operational key metrics to develop actionable insights and strategies that shape our product and service, and positively impact customer love. Working with the Product, Engineering, Design and Customer Experience teams, you will be expected to tackle both highly strategic and deeply operational initiatives to deliver value for customers and Gusto. You’ll be customer-obsessed, business-minded, strategic, detail-oriented, and highly creative. In this role, you'll help stand up the operational and service foundation for a new Gusto product, using both deep human judgment and emerging AI tools to move faster and make better decisions. If this sounds exciting to you, we’d love to connect!
About The Team
The Benefits Product Operations team at Gusto is made up of committed, creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to enable Benefits for all small and mid-sized businesses and their employees. We’re a highly cross-functional team focused on ensuring our product and service are co-designed and co-developed along the product lifecycle to deliver a best in class customer experience; Gusto is listening to, synthesizing and acting on customer and front-line team feedback; and that cross-functional teams are collaborating and swimming together to build the best version of Gusto for our customers.
Here’s What You’ll Do Day-to-day
- Shape and support product development and its integration into service strategy for existing customers across the product lifecycle, in collaboration with Engineering, Design, Product Management, and Customer Experience teams.
- Understand our product and end-to-end service experience and organizations in intimate detail, including internal and external pain points and feedback. Collaborate to ensure customer support considerations are integrated into broader company decisions.
- Lead and partner on product launches between Product Management and Customer Experience (CX) teams to ensure readiness and deliver insights post-launch to ensure a positive experience for customers and internal teams.
- Provide business insights and recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative data to influence strategy and operational design in both product and service roadmaps.
- Identify and drive cross-functional initiatives that will deliver value for customers and Gusto. Help develop and communicate a clear roadmap for enhancing service capabilities and experiences.
- Hypothesis-driven problem solving to drive our business.
- Contribute to advancing the Product Operations craft at Gusto and build AI fluency within the team:
- Model how to use AI tools to accelerate service design, insight synthesis, and agent-driven operational workflows.
- Identify and build AI-assisted operational workflows, including agents, to accelerate VoC synthesis, launch readiness monitoring, and cross-functional signal aggregation.
- Use AI tools to prototype service solutions and surface requirements faster, compressing the feedback loop between customer signal and product/service response — before full engineering investment.
Here’s What We're Looking For
- 10+ years of relevant work experience at growing startups in operating roles (i.e., biz ops/strategy roles, product operations, project/program management, and/or consulting):
- Experience scaling service strategy alongside growing SaaS products, including incubating products, building and managing product betas, and/or integrating new products into a scalable best-in-class service model.
- Highly adaptable and resilient to changes in business needs or requirements, with the ability to navigate challenges and make decisions even when information is incomplete.
- Demonstrated self-starter and organized problem-solver. Self-sufficient, resourceful, and bias for action towards continuous improvement.
- Experienced with managing a variety of cross-functional stakeholders on complex strategic initiatives, including influencing senior leaders in Product or Customer Experience orgs.
- Strong data literacy and results-orientation, with the ability to identify the right questions, interpret quantitative and qualitative signals, and translate findings into decisions — including comfort using AI-assisted tools for analysis and synthesis.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to effectively communicate complex subjects to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Demonstrated AI fluency in an operational and product context — comfort using AI tools to synthesize qualitative data, identify automation opportunities in service workflows, and building or directing AI agents to reduce manual operational lift:
- Experience prototyping with AI (e.g., Claude, Cursor, Codex or similar) is a plus.
- Experience with service design and/or service blueprinting.
- Experience working in the healthcare or benefits space (PEO, health insurance, etc.) is a plus; candidates with new product incubation experience in any complex regulated space are strongly encouraged to apply.
Compensation
- Our cash compensation amount for this role is $148,000/yr to $182,000/yr in Denver, and $167,000/yr to $217,000/yr for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate location, experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.
Location
Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City. Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role). The same office expectations apply to all Symmetry roles, Gusto's subsidiary, whose physical office is in Scottsdale. Note: The San Francisco office expectations encompass both the San Francisco and San Jose metro areas. When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required. This includes non-office days for hybrid employees.
Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.
Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. We want to see our candidates perform to the best of their ability. If you require a medical or religious accommodation at any time throughout your candidate journey, please fill out this form and a member of our team will get in touch with you.
Gusto takes security and protection of your personal information very seriously. Please review our Fraudulent Activity Disclaimer. Personal information collected and processed as part of your Gusto application will be subject to Gusto's Applicant Privacy Notice.
See all 14+ Principal Solution Architect jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new Principal Solution Architect roles.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding J-1 Visa Sponsorship in Principal Solution Architect
Align your credentials to specialty occupation standards
Document your degree, professional certifications, and architecture experience against the J-1 Trainee or Specialist category requirements before applying. Sponsors evaluate whether your background justifies structured on-the-job training in a U.S. enterprise environment.
Build a targeted training plan before outreach
Designated sponsors require a detailed training plan outlining specific skills you'll develop in the host role. Draft this document early, mapping cloud platform competencies or enterprise solution design milestones to the Principal Solution Architect scope your host employer expects.
Search Migrate Mate for J-1-aligned host employers
Filter by role and sponsorship type on Migrate Mate to identify U.S. companies actively hosting international solution architects. Targeting employers with existing J-1 host agreements shortens your placement timeline significantly compared to cold outreach.
Clarify the 2-year home residency requirement upfront
Certain J-1 Specialist placements trigger a two-year home-country residency requirement before you can change to H-1B or a green card pathway. Confirm whether your country, funding source, or skills list triggers this obligation before accepting any offer.
Verify your host employer's J-1 program eligibility early
Not every U.S. company can immediately host a J-1 exchange visitor. Ask your prospective employer whether they have an existing agreement with a State Department-designated sponsor organization, or whether they're prepared to establish one before your DS-2019 is issued.
Confirm wage compliance with the OFLC Wage Search
The OFLC Wage Search lets you verify that your offered compensation meets the prevailing wage for Principal Solution Architect roles in your target metro area. Designated sponsors and host employers must demonstrate wage compliance before USCIS or the sponsor will proceed.
Principal Solution Architect jobs are hiring across the US. Find yours.
Find Principal Solution Architect JobsPrincipal Solution Architect J-1 Visa: Frequently Asked Questions
Which J-1 program category applies to a Principal Solution Architect role?
Most Principal Solution Architect candidates qualify under the J-1 Trainee or Specialist category. Trainee applies if you've completed a degree or professional training program within the past 12 months or have at least one year of experience outside the United States. Specialist applies to professionals with recognized expertise in a specific field, which fits senior solution architecture roles well. Your designated sponsor determines the appropriate category based on your background and the host employer's training plan.
Who actually sponsors my J-1 visa for this type of role?
The J-1 visa sponsor is a U.S. Department of State-designated organization, not your hiring employer. Organizations such as CIEE, Cultural Vistas, or IIE issue your DS-2019 form and remain responsible for program compliance throughout your placement. Your host employer, typically the company where you perform the solution architect work, is a separate party that must meet the sponsor's eligibility and training plan requirements.
Does the 2-year home residency requirement affect Principal Solution Architects?
It can. If your J-1 placement is funded by your home government, if your skills appear on the Exchange Visitor Skills List, or if you're a national of certain countries, the two-year home residency requirement applies. This means you'd need to return home for two years before switching to an H-1B or applying for a green card. Confirm your status with your designated sponsor before signing an offer letter.
How do I find U.S. employers open to hosting a J-1 solution architect?
Use Migrate Mate to search for Principal Solution Architect roles at companies that have demonstrated openness to international placements and J-1 sponsorship arrangements. Targeting employers who already have a relationship with a designated sponsor organization is the most efficient path, since it avoids the time and administrative steps required to establish a new host agreement from scratch.
Can I convert my J-1 status to H-1B after working as a Principal Solution Architect?
Yes, if the two-year home residency requirement doesn't apply to you or has been waived. If you're not subject to that requirement, your host employer can file an H-1B petition on your behalf during the standard USCIS registration period. If the requirement does apply, you'll need a waiver, typically a no-objection statement from your home government or a hardship-based waiver, before pursuing any H-1B or immigrant visa pathway.
See which Principal Solution Architect employers are hiring and sponsoring visas right now.
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