Principal AI Architect

Harnham; Kitchener; Remote; CAD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible remote work

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Harnham partners with a rapidly scaling SaaS AI-first company to appoint a Principal AI Architect who will define the next generation of their AI platform. This leadership role shapes architectural strategy and drives the technical vision for production-grade AI products used by enterprise customers.

You will mentor engineers, collaborate with product and ML leaders, and define standards, roadmaps, and best practices across the AI stack.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including Staff, Principal, or equivalent level.
• Proven track record building and shipping production agentic AI systems.
• Deep expertise in LLM orchestration, multi-agent architectures, tool-use frameworks, and agent execution environments.
• Strong experience designing advanced RAG and retrieval systems, including hybrid search, reranking, query decomposition, metadata filtering, and evidence validation.
• Expertise developing AI evaluation frameworks, testing methodologies, and quality measurement systems.
• Strong understanding of large-scale distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, model serving, and observability.
• Hands-on proficiency with Python and modern AI frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Microsoft Agent Framework, or similar technologies.
• Demonstrated experience influencing senior engineering teams and architectural decisions across large-scale technical organizations.

Responsibilities

• Defining the architecture, standards, and technical roadmap for agentic AI products and infrastructure.
• Designing scalable multi-agent systems, orchestration frameworks, reasoning engines, memory architectures, and planning workflows.
• Building robust AI evaluation, testing, observability, tracing, and monitoring capabilities.
• Establishing quality frameworks including automated evaluations, regression testing, experimentation platforms, and release governance.
• Reviewing system architecture, identifying technical risks, and influencing engineering decisions across multiple teams.
• Driving best practices for production AI systems, retrieval architectures, and LLM-powered applications.
• Mentoring senior engineers and acting as a trusted technical leader across the organization.
• Evaluating emerging AI technologies and translating them into practical business impact.

Skills

LLM orchestration

Multi-agent architecture

Tool-use frameworks

Agent execution envs

RAG retrieval

Hybrid search

Metadata filtering

Evidence validation

Evaluation frameworks

Observability

Distributed systems

Cloud infrastructure

Model serving

Python

LangChain

LangGraph

Microsoft Agent Framework

Tools

AWS

Job description

We're partnering with a rapidly scaling SaaS technology business that is investing heavily in the future of Agentic AI. Their platform helps organizations unlock value from complex content, documents, and enterprise knowledge, leveraging cutting-edge AI systems to automate high-value workflows at scale.

Having already established strong foundations in AI, they are now seeking a Principal AI Architect to define the next generation of their AI platform. This is a highly influential leadership position where you'll shape architectural strategy, establish best practices, and drive the technical vision behind production-grade AI products used by enterprise customers.

If you're passionate about building sophisticated agentic systems and want the opportunity to influence the future direction of a growing AI-first company, this is an exceptional opportunity.

The Role

As the Principal AI Architect, you will operate as the technical authority for the organization's AI architecture and infrastructure strategy.

You'll work closely with Engineering, Product, and Machine Learning leaders to design scalable, reliable, and measurable AI systems while mentoring senior engineers and driving engineering excellence across the business.

Key responsibilities include:

• Defining the architecture, standards, and technical roadmap for agentic AI products and infrastructure.
• Designing scalable multi-agent systems, orchestration frameworks, reasoning engines, memory architectures, and planning workflows.
• Building robust AI evaluation, testing, observability, tracing, and monitoring capabilities.
• Establishing quality frameworks including automated evaluations, regression testing, experimentation platforms, and release governance.
• Reviewing system architecture, identifying technical risks, and influencing engineering decisions across multiple teams.
• Driving best practices for production AI systems, retrieval architectures, and LLM-powered applications.
• Mentoring senior engineers and acting as a trusted technical leader across the organization.
• Evaluating emerging AI technologies and translating them into practical business impact.

What We're Looking For

Required Experience

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience operating at Staff, Principal, or equivalent level.
• Proven track record building and shipping production agentic AI systems.
• Deep expertise in LLM orchestration, multi-agent architectures, tool-use frameworks, and agent execution environments.
• Strong experience designing advanced RAG and retrieval systems, including hybrid search, reranking, query decomposition, metadata filtering, and evidence validation.
• Expertise developing AI evaluation frameworks, testing methodologies, and quality measurement systems.
• Strong understanding of large-scale distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, model serving, and observability.
• Hands-on proficiency with Python and modern AI frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Microsoft Agent Framework, or similar technologies.
• Demonstrated experience influencing senior engineering teams and architectural decisions across large-scale technical organizations.

Nice to Have

• Experience building AI-driven SaaS products focused on enterprise knowledge, documents, content management, or search.
• Expertise with AWS and cloud-native machine learning platforms.
• Previous experience as a Principal Architect, Distinguished Engineer, or Staff+ technical leader within a high-growth technology business.

Why Join?

• Opportunity to define the architecture of a next-generation AI platform.
• Highly visible Principal-level individual contributor role.
• Significant influence on product strategy and technical direction.
• Work alongside a high-calibre team building cutting-edge agentic AI systems.
• Competitive compensation package.
• Flexible remote working environment.
• Exceptional opportunity for long-term career growth as the company scales.

Keywords

Principal AI Architect | Principal Engineer | Agentic AI | Multi-Agent Systems | LLM Architecture | RAG | AI Infrastructure | LangChain | LangGraph | Microsoft Agent Framework | AI Evaluation | Observability | AI Platform Engineering | AWS | Distributed Systems | Machine Learning Infrastructure | Enterprise AI | Knowledge Systems | Retrieval Systems | SaaS Technology | Staff Engineer | Principal Architect | AI Quality Engineering | AI Systems Design