Principal Architect AI Platform

Description

BMO is establishing a dedicated AI Engineering function, and this role is its

BMO is establishing a dedicated AI Engineering function, and this role is its singular architectural authority
.

• Singular architectural oversight across the AI Engineering function and across Cloud AI and Workspace Engineering for all AI surfaces.
• Standing architectural authority to the Microsoft AI Council: prepare cross-organizational architecture decisions for Council ratification, adjudicate Microsoft AI boundary questions, and evaluate preview features against bank governance. Enterprise Architecture serves as formal arbiter for unresolved disputes.
• Architectural coherence across planes and platforms: ensure the Control Plane, Domain Orchestration, and domain-owned execution fit together into one coherent, governed architecture.
• Regulatory-defensible architecture: ensure architectural decisions produce model-risk and regulatory evidence (OSFI E-23, OCC) at runtime, by design.

• Define and maintain the target AI architecture for the enterprise: reference architectures, architectural standards, and the guardrails that governed platform capabilities and domain workloads must conform to.
• Set architectural direction across the function's Directors and squads (Platform & Fabrics, Developer Experience) and across sibling disciplines (Security, Dev Ops, Data Engineering), resolving competing approaches into a coherent whole.
• Provide architectural governance for major AI initiatives: reviewing designs for coherence, scalability, security, cost, residency, Responsible AI, and regulatory fit and represent them at Architecture Review Board.
• Own the architectural coherence of BMO's Microsoft AI surface (Copilot, Copilot Studio, Fabric Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365) across the two operating organizations, including the Three-Zone citizen governance framework and federation with the AI Registry.
• Lead assessment of emerging AI capabilities, foundation models, and architectural approaches; translating rapid market change into deliberate, defensible architectural positions for the bank.
• Partner with AI Platform & Fabrics to ensure platform capabilities (Gateway, Policy Engine, Identity Fabric, Registry, Guardrails, Observability) realize the target architecture, and with AI Developer Experience / Domain Solution Architects to ensure domain patterns conform to it.
• Provide architectural mentorship and technical leadership to architects and principal engineers across the function, growing architectural capability and consistency.
• Establish and steward the transition architecture for AI-incubated, bank-wide-eligible platforms (Identity Fabric, Policy Engine) as they mature toward enterprise ownership.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline (Master's preferred).
• 10+ years in software engineering, solution architecture, and enterprise architecture, with substantial time at a principal/senior architect level setting direction across multiple teams.
• 3+ years focused on AI/ML and GenAI architecture, including hands-on exposure to production GenAI systems (RAG, agentic workflows, model serving, guardrails).
• Demonstrated experience holding cross-team or cross-organizational architectural authority — setting standards others must follow, and aligning senior stakeholders without direct reporting lines.
• Experience architecting AI in a regulated industry (financial services strongly preferred), with a working understanding of model-risk management and regulatory expectations (OSFI, OCC, or equivalent).

• Proven ability to establish architectural coherence across…