AI Consulting & Solution Sales
Diagnosing what an organisation should build, and being trusted enough to say "not yet".
Who this is for
Consultants, solution architects, and sales engineers scoping enterprise AI work.
What you should be able to do
Run a discovery that ends in a scoped recommendation, including where the answer is to defer.
Career ladder
The titles this track maps onto. Levels differ between companies — the useful part is the direction, and what each step adds to the one before it.
- Analyst
- Consultant
- Senior Consultant
- Principal Consultant
- Partner / Practice Lead
Tech stack
What the work is actually done with. Grouped by the job each tool does, so the list reads as a system rather than a pile of names.
- Discovery
- Current-state assessmentCapability mappingReadiness scoring
- Commercial
- Fixed-price scopingSOWValue engineering
- Proof
- Reference architecturesDemosPilots with exit criteria
- Objections
- Security reviewProcurementBuild vs buy
The delivery flow
The order the work actually happens in. Each step is where a decision gets made and written down, not a chapter heading.
- Qualify
- Discovery
- Current-state assessment
- Capability gap
- Build / buy / defer
- Scoped proposal
- Security review
- Delivery handover
Reference repository structure
A starting layout for this track. The directories are the ones that get added late and hurt — decisions, evals, policy, lineage — promoted to the top level where they are visible.
engagement/ ├── discovery/ │ ├── interviews/ │ └── current-state.md ├── assessment/ │ ├── capability-map.md │ └── readiness-score.md ├── recommendation/ │ ├── build-buy-defer.md # deferring is a legitimate outcome │ └── architecture/ ├── commercial/ │ ├── scope.md # what is excluded, stated plainly │ └── sow.md ├── security-review/ # the questions that stall deals, pre-answered └── handover/
Reference implementations
Citadel’s open-source repositories for this track — Terraform modules, MCP servers, and reference architectures you can read, fork, and run. Apache/MIT licensed; check each repository for its terms.
- GitHubsoftware-factory-architectureEnterprise Multi-Cloud DevSecOps Software Factory Architecture — Interactive Reference Diagramsoftware-factory-architecture on github.com (external site, opens in a new tab)
- GitHubmulti-cloud-landing-zoneMulti-cloud landing zone architecture for AWS, Azure, and GCP with identity federationmulti-cloud-landing-zone on github.com (external site, opens in a new tab)
- GitHub ★ 2citadel-saas-factory265 autonomous AI agents across 15 business domains. Full-stack SaaS framework with real model routing, RAG pipeline, guardrails, and Chrome extension. FastAPI + Next.js + K3s. Runs on any server. $0/month software cost.citadel-saas-factory on github.com (external site, opens in a new tab)
Primary sources
The standards, framework documents, and vendor references this track is built against. Go here when you need the authoritative wording rather than a summary — in a security review or an audit, the source is what counts.