Principal AI Architect

Location: US - Remote

Salary: $165,604–$228,491 USD per year

Company

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

What you will do

• Define technical strategy and lead end-to-end architecture across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems.
• Design scalable cloud-native, multi-cloud, hybrid, data, and AI platforms, including warehouses, lakes, pipelines, model serving, MLOps, feature stores, and LLM applications.
• Establish infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, DevOps, security, governance, compliance, and observability standards.
• Drive performance, scalability, cost, and reliability improvements, as well as cloud migrations and platform modernization.
• Act as the principal technical voice for leadership and clients, translating complex concepts for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Mentor experienced engineers and architects, own difficult integration challenges, and evaluate emerging technologies.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 5 years in technical leadership.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms and cloud-native architectures, with experience in multi-cloud environments.
• Strong background in microservices, serverless systems, containers, event-driven architecture, networking, security, identity, and access management.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, CI/CD, data modeling, ETL/ELT pipelines, orchestration, and relational, NoSQL, and big data systems.
• Production experience designing AI/ML systems, including LLMs, MLOps, model serving, and relevant frameworks and platforms.
• Strong Python, API, stakeholder communication, technical leadership, mentoring, governance, compliance, and observability skills.

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.

Culture & Benefits

• Production-ready AI systems are shipped within 30–45 days.
• Work emphasizes ownership, direct feedback, continuous learning, craftsmanship, and practical problem-solving.
• Teams average more than fifteen years of experience and collaborate closely with clients and cross-functional specialists.
• Benefits include paid time off, medical, dental, and vision insurance, and a 401(k) for eligible employees.
• Employment may be conditional on completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation.