Senior AI Architect​/Lead Engineer

Position Description

The Program Manager – AI Engineering will serve as the organization's senior technical leader for AI, responsible for the AI capability stack, setting the standards that govern how AI solutions are built, and translating strategic priorities into a credible, phased delivery plan. This is a hands‑on role, as the AI Engineering lead, they will prototype and build solutions, evaluate tooling, and directly shape how AI is built and delivered.

This person must be able to present architecture decisions to non‑technical leadership as well as work alongside engineers.

• Provide guidance on architectural direction for the AI capability stack on Microsoft Azure, including data flow patterns, integration approach, and selection of appropriate AI services in partnership with technical leadership.
• Work with Technical Leadership to make and document build vs. buy decisions, including evaluation of existing vendor relationships and third‑party AI capabilities.
• Ensure compliance requirements, including FedRAMP, are identified early and designed in, engaging internal and vendor resources where deeper expertise is needed.
• Provide guidance on AI standards covering solution design, testing, documentation, and handoff practices.
• Evaluate the Ask Sage and Copilot deployments and advise on the role within the broader AI stack.
• Advise on data architecture patterns appropriate for AI workloads, including retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), document ingestion pipelines, and knowledge retrieval.

• Build working prototypes of prioritized AI capabilities to validate feasibility and demonstrate technical direction.
• Evaluate the current AI capabilities and recommend a plan to grow capabilities through training or augmentation.
• Work with internal and external team members to determine the best delivery strategy.
• Establish a working relationship with the AI Transformation Lead, including clear handoffs and an agreed collaboration rhythm.

LLM Application Development

• Hands‑on experience building production LLM‑based applications, including prompt engineering, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and document processing pipelines.
• Experience with knowledge retrieval systems using vector search and semantic indexing.
• Experience with intelligent document processing, including OCR, document classification, and structured data extraction from unstructured sources.
• Practical understanding of when LLM‑based approaches are the right solution and when simpler methods are more appropriate and the ability to make that case clearly.
• Hands‑on experience with Azure AI Services:
  Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, Azure Document Intelligence, and Azure Cognitive Services.
• Working knowledge of Azure data and compute infrastructure relevant to AI workloads:
  Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Lake, Azure Functions, and Azure Container Apps.
• Experience with Azure Dev Ops for solution delivery and Azure AI Studio for model management and deployment.

Compliance & Regulated Environments

• Demonstrated experience designing AI solutions for FedRAMP‑compliant or similarly regulated environments.
• Ability to translate compliance requirements into concrete architecture decisions and communicate them clearly to non‑technical stakeholders.

Software Engineering Fundamentals

• Proficiency in Python for AI application development.
• Experience designing APIs that expose AI capabilities to downstream applications.
• Familiarity with C# or Type Script in Azure/.NET environments is a plus.

• Agentic workflow design, including multi‑step orchestration using frameworks such as Lang Chain, Semantic Kernel, or Auto Gen.
• LLMOps practices including prompt versioning, output observability, and evaluation frameworks.
• Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, Bicep).
• Microsoft Power Platform (Power Automate, Copilot Studio) as a delivery layer for workflow automation.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) or equivalent standards for connecting AI models to organizational data and tools.

Required

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions…