Principal AI Architect

Location: Remote, Canada

Salary: $179,490–$247,650 per year; budget of $215,000

Company

Robots & Pencils designs and delivers production-ready AI systems and digital solutions for client workflows and enterprise operations.

What you will do

• Define technical strategy and lead architecture across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/ML systems for end-to-end client engagements.
• Architect scalable cloud-native, multi-cloud, and hybrid solutions using platforms and technologies such as AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and containers.
• Design data warehouses, data lakes, batch and streaming pipelines, AI/ML systems, model serving, MLOps pipelines, feature stores, and LLM-based applications.
• Establish infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, DevOps, security, governance, compliance, observability, and architecture documentation standards.
• Lead cloud migrations and platform modernization while optimizing performance, scalability, cost, and reliability.
• Partner with senior leadership, clients, engineering, data, AI, and product teams; mentor experienced engineers and make high-stakes technical decisions.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 5 years in technical leadership roles.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms and cloud-native architecture, including AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Strong experience with microservices, serverless, containers, and event-driven systems, including Kubernetes, Docker, Lambda, or EventBridge.
• Proficiency in infrastructure as code and CI/CD, including Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, or GitHub Actions.
• Strong data architecture experience across relational, NoSQL, and big data systems, including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, or Kafka.
• Hands-on experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT pipelines, and orchestration using tools such as Airflow, Prefect, or dbt.
• Strong production AI/ML systems experience, including LLMs, MLOps, model serving, SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face, PyTorch, or TensorFlow.
• Understanding of networking, security, identity and access management, governance, compliance, and observability in cloud environments.
• Strong software engineering skills with Python, APIs, and containerization; demonstrated senior technical leadership, mentoring, stakeholder communication, and use of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor.

Nice to have

• Multi-cloud architecture experience, AI ethics or responsible AI experience, or enterprise architecture certifications such as TOGAF or AWS, Azure, or GCP certifications.
• Experience designing AI/ML solutions integrating with SAP EAM data structures, including Equipment Masters, Work Orders, or Notifications, through SAP BTP or cloud-native APIs.

Culture & Benefits

• Work remotely from Canada.
• Build production-ready AI systems intended for real people and enterprise workflows.
• Work with experienced teams averaging more than fifteen years of experience.
• Operate with ownership, direct feedback, craftsmanship, resourcefulness, and a focus on delivering within practical constraints.