AI Architect

This range is provided by Bayside Solutions. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

$80.00/hr - $90.00/hr

AI Architect

W2 Contract-to-Hire

Salary Range: $166,400 - $187,200 per year

Location: Dublin, CA - Hybrid Role

The AI Architect will be responsible for defining and maintaining the AI technology roadmap and plans. The architect will also identify, communicate, and mitigate risks within the roadmap or implementation plans and participate in the IT 5-year planning and annual budgeting process.

• Lead AI Solution Architecture for Digital Assistants and AI Agents.
• Create criteria for evaluating, comparing, and selecting AI services.
• Architect scalable and secure digital assistant and AI agent solutions leveraging Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, and Graph Connectors.
• Define architectural patterns for integrating enterprise data sources (e.g., file shares, SQL, APIs) to support retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and intelligent interactions.
• Ensure solutions meet performance, accuracy, and governance requirements.
• Develop and Govern Enterprise AI Patterns and Best Practices
• Create and maintain reusable architecture frameworks, reference implementations, and guardrails for AI use cases across the organization.
• Establish guidelines for responsible AI, including transparency, fairness, and privacy.
• Champion LLMOps practices to streamline lifecycle management of models and prompts.
• Take a leadership role in exploring and analyzing new applications and opportunities in AI in the marketplace, technology, and infrastructure services. Prepare ROI analysis and assist with creating budget proposals to initiate the acquisition of new AI services.
• Develop an AI governance framework in conjunction with the AI CoE and architecture review board that will enable the organization to consume AI services and reduce risks.
• Provide architecture and technology consultancy for portfolio planning.
• Partner with product managers, business analysts, engineers, and domain experts to identify high-impact AI opportunities and co-design solutions.
• Partner with other architects, security, engineering, legal, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to enterprise policies and regulatory standards.
• Support broader AI Initiatives across the enterprise.
• Provide architecture leadership for AI use cases such as computer vision, forecasting models, personalization engines, and process automation.
• Design AI solutions that are cloud-native and aligned with modern data and event-driven architectures.
• Develop internal AI Financial Mgmt and Ops practices, collaborating with the CoE, Cloud Platform, and IT Finance team.
• Mentor and enable the broader IT team through architectural reviews, hands-on workshops, and training on AI tooling and practices.
• Act as an internal advisor and evangelist for AI transformation within the organization.
• Ensure completion of architectural and project deliverables on time and within budget, and that anticipated business outcomes are achieved.
• Provide architectural and technical input for the definition, estimation, and delivery of AI projects.

• Bachelor's degree in information systems, computer science, or a related technical discipline. A master's degree is a plus.
• Minimum 7 years of experience in IT solution architecture, software engineering, or data/AI-related roles.
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience architecting and deploying AI/ML or intelligent automation solutions in a production environment.
• Proven experience delivering projects using Microsoft service offerings - Azure cloud services, Azure AI services (including Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, AI Search, and related tools), Copilot Studio, and integration with Microsoft 365 and Teams.
• Solid understanding of LLMOps, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, vector indexing, and orchestration of generative AI workflows.
• Experience with data integration, including ingestion from enterprise data sources (file shares, SQL, APIs) and Microsoft Graph connectors.
• Understanding of AI security, compliance, data privacy, and…