Senior AI Architect & Design Authority

The Citation Group; West of England; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

The Citation Group is seeking an AI Architect to lead architectural decisions across AI and data domains, sitting within the AI delivery area and reporting to the Chief AI Officer. The role combines hands-on system design with governance across model selection, data readiness, and cost management.

You will influence across Product, Engineering, Security, and Infrastructure to ensure cohesive AI architecture, patterns, and responsible cost control.

Qualifications

• Senior level experience in software, data, or platform engineering/architecture (6+ years).
• Hands-on time on production AI systems, not just pilots.
• Ability to influence through judgment and conversations, not headcount.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain AI architectural patterns and standards across the AI/data domain.
• Own design patterns for retrieval/grounding, agent orchestration, prompts, guardrails, and routing logic.
• Develop a documented decision framework for model selection and hosting choices.
• Manage token economics, observability, and cost-per-outcome; ensure security is integrated from the start.
• Act as internal architectural counterpart to delivery partners, guiding SOWs and design reviews.

Skills

AI architecture

Software engineering

Data architecture

Production AI systems

Tools

OpenAI models

Anthropic

Google/other frontier models

Job description

The Citation Group is seeking an AI Architect to lead architectural decisions across AI and data domains, sitting within the AI delivery area and reporting to the Chief AI Officer. The role combines hands-on system design with governance across model selection, data readiness, and cost management.

You will influence across Product, Engineering, Security, and Infrastructure to ensure cohesive AI architecture, patterns, and responsible cost control.