Senior Architect

MRJ Recruitment Limited; Manchester; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

MRJ Recruitment Limited partnerships with a business at the outset of its AI journey to define and implement a new AI capability, shaping how AI integrates into the technology landscape and setting architectural direction, standards and delivery approaches.

You will work across technology, data, security, product and operations to design AI-enabled products and workflows, balancing speed with security and long-term maintainability while remaining close to delivery from prototype to production.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering cloud-based AI solutions in live production.
• Hands-on with modern AI patterns: LLMs, RAG, agents, and automation.
• Strong integration, security, and enterprise architecture knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Define the target architecture and technical roadmap for the organisation's AI capability.
• Translate business problems into solution designs and delivery increments.
• Design end-to-end AI solutions spanning data, models, retrieval, agents, applications, APIs, and cloud services.
• Establish reference architectures and guardrails for generative AI, RAG, intelligent automation and agentic workflows.
• Lead technical discovery and rapid proofs of value, then shape the route from prototype to production.
• Set expectations for security, privacy, observability, resilience, evaluation, human oversight and responsible AI.
• Assess model, platform and vendor options, including build-versus-buy decisions, commercial implications and lock-in risk.
• Partner with engineering and delivery teams through implementation, resolving design decisions without creating unnecessary governance.
• Communicate complex architecture clearly to executives, delivery teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Help build the team, engineering culture and technical capability needed to scale AI across the business.

Skills

Cloud architecture

AI architecture

LLM patterns

RAG

Agent orchestration

APIs

Security

Executive influence

Job description

Join a business right at the beginning of their AI journey!!

"We are building a new AI capability from the ground up as part of a wider transformation of the business and this is an opportunity to join right at the beginning of our journey: shaping the strategy, foundations, delivery approach and culture rather than inheriting somebody else's playbook."

The role

You will define how AI fits into the organisation's wider technology landscape and turn high-value business opportunities into production-ready solutions. Joining at the very beginning of the journey, you will set the architectural direction, create the standards others build against and remain close enough to delivery to prove what works.

This is not a purely advisory architecture role. You will work across technology, data, security, product and operations to design and shape AI-enabled products, services and workflows. You will make pragmatic decisions across models, agents, applications, integrations, data and cloud infrastructure, balancing pace with security, reliability, cost and long-term maintainability.

What you will do

• Define the target architecture and technical roadmap for the organisation's AI capability.
• Translate business problems into clear solution designs, architectural options and delivery increments.
• Design end-to-end AI solutions spanning data, models, retrieval, agents, applications, APIs, integrations and cloud services.
• Establish reference architectures, reusable patterns and guardrails for generative AI, RAG, intelligent automation and agentic workflows.
• Lead technical discovery and rapid proofs of value, then shape the route from prototype to production.
• Set expectations for security, privacy, observability, resilience, evaluation, human oversight and responsible AI.
• Assess model, platform and vendor options, including build-versus-buy decisions, commercial implications and lock-in risk.
• Partner with engineering and delivery teams through implementation, resolving design decisions without creating unnecessary governance.
• Communicate complex architecture clearly to executives, delivery teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Help build the team, engineering culture and technical capability needed to scale AI across the business.

What we are looking for

• A strong track record designing and delivering complex cloud-based solutions into live production environments.
• Practical experience with modern AI solution patterns such as LLM applications, RAG, agents, orchestration, prompt and model evaluation, and AI-enabled automation.
• Strong understanding of integration architecture, APIs, event-driven systems, identity, data platforms and enterprise security.
• The judgement to choose the simplest viable architecture while keeping a clear path to scale.
• Experience taking experimental or emerging technology through assurance, operational readiness and production adoption.
• Confidence influencing senior leaders while remaining credible and collaborative with hands-on engineers.
• A product mindset: focused on users, measurable value and continuous learning rather than technology for its own sake.

Why join and next steps:

You will have genuine influence, visibility and the space to build well from day one. The team will tackle meaningful business problems, combining rapid experimentation with the standards required to make AI secure, trusted and valuable at scale. If you enjoy creating clarity where there is ambiguity and want your work to shape an organisation's future, this is a rare opportunity to do exactly that.