Principal Architect; Azure + AI

Enterprise Architect (AI)

Distinguished Tech Innovator:

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Pillar warmly extends an invitation for you to join an elite team of visionaries. Beyond software development, we are dedicated to engineering solutions that challenge conventional norms. Envision you: steering projects that redefine urban living, establishing new media channels for enterprise companies, or driving innovation in healthcare. Your invaluable expertise will serve as the cornerstone in shaping the future direction of our endeavors.

This role is the foremost technical authority within a technology stack. The Enterprise Architect (AI) not only owns high-level design decisions and technical standards - they define the architectural vision that shapes how 3

Pillar engineers build and how our clients compete. The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker and practitioner in equal measure, as comfortable advising executive stakeholders on technology investment as they are resolving the toughest architectural governance challenges on the ground.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Act as the emissary of the architecture and own the design authority:
  Lead the Architecture Review Board (ARB) to ensure technical alignment, compliance, and standardization across the enterprise portfolio.
• Define 3
  
  Pillar's AI architecture vision and engineering standards, establishing the patterns and governance frameworks that Solution Architects, Tech Leads, and engineers across the organization follow.
• Own the Azure Cloud and Data Standards:
  Serve as a deep Azure-native expert at the reference-architecture altitude. Define the sanctioned Azure landing-zone, the Fabric data standard, and the sanctioned Azure AI consumption patterns. Design and oversee modern data architectures that fuel AI systems, leveraging Data Lakehouse paradigms and integrating native tools like Microsoft Fabric and Azure SQL to ensure seamless data flows and high-performance querying.
• Build the Enterprise Reference Architectures and Reusable Patterns Library:
  Drive original IP creation by defining and governing concrete, reusable architectural frameworks and internal tooling that increase 3
  
  Pillar's competitive advantage. Make these patterns concrete by establishing multi-tenant isolation for regulated data, PII-segregated AI, and audit/provenance controls for federally-funded work.
• Lead Technology-Portfolio and Build-vs-Buy Strategy:
  Assess the enterprise technology landscape, evaluate vendor solutions, and formulate build-vs-buy decisions for new technology insertion.
• Drive Business-Capability Mapping:
  Partner with appropriate stakeholders to map business capabilities to technology solutions, determine functional and nonfunctional requirements, and define business goals for a set of scenarios.
• Govern the delivery of enterprise-grade AI systems:
  Oversee LLM-powered features, RAG pipelines, agentic frameworks, and model inference infrastructure across complex, multi-team programs at the governance and standards level.
• Advise stakeholders at the senior and executive levels on AI strategy, technology investment prioritization, risk posture, and competitive positioning, translating ambition into technically sound, phased roadmaps.
• Continuously evaluate the global AI landscape - foundation model developments, emerging frameworks, and regulatory shifts - and brief engineering and business leadership on strategic implications.
• Manage risk identification and mitigation strategies for the architecture.
• Lead AI risk management at the organizational level: vendor lock-in, data privacy, model drift, adversarial inputs, and compliance with evolving AI regulation (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, GDPR, HIPAA).
• Influence and communicate long-term product vision, technical vision, development strategy, and roadmap.
• Drive original IP creation: reusable AI architectural frameworks, reference architectures, accelerators, and internal tooling that increase 3
  
  Pillar's competitive advantage across engagements.
• Establish and lead 3
  
  Pillar's AI Centre of Excellence - curating architectural patterns, governing responsible AI standards, and publishing guidance consumed across the engineering organization.
• Active leader in the Architecture Practice…