Senior Manager, AI Architect

Jackalope Digital LLC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Baringa, a global consulting firm, is seeking an experienced AI Architect and Senior Manager to own the end-to-end architecture of enterprise AI platforms. You will lead engagements, guide multi-disciplinary teams, and shape architectural roadmaps for complex programmes.

You will act as a trusted advisor to client CTOs and engineering leaders, drive business development, and contribute to bid responses, while balancing technical excellence with delivery pragmatism across multi-cloud environments.

Qualifications

• SME-level depth in enterprise AI architecture.
• Experience leading engagements and client advisory in AI/ML projects.
• Ability to shape architectural roadmaps and guide multi-disciplinary teams.
• Proven track record in business development and bid support for AI engagements.

Responsibilities

• Own and lead the architecture of complex AI programmes end-to-end.
• Lead multi-disciplinary delivery teams including architects, engineers, and data scientists.
• Manage engagement resourcing and mentor junior practitioners.
• Identify and manage delivery and architectural risks with client stakeholders.
• Facilitate architecture workshops and drive alignment across teams.
• Translate business strategy into architectural roadmaps.

Skills

AI architecture

Enterprise AI

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Solution design

Business development

Bid support

Cloud architecture

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Claude Enterprise

Azure

AWS

GCP

Job description

About Baringa

Baringa is a global consulting firm that partners with leaders to drive change and create value. With deep industry expertise, and enabled by advanced technology, the firm helps clients to deliver with greater confidence and certainty. With over 2,000 people across the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, the firm combines global insight with local understanding.

The firm works across energy and resources, financial services, government and public sector, consumer products and retail, pharmaceuticals and life sciences, manufacturing, and technology, media and telecoms, with capabilities spanning strategy, transformation and operational excellence – all powered by advanced technology, data, AI and digital innovation.

Clients value Baringa’s collaborative approach and the way its teams integrate seamlessly – all working with a shared understanding of what matters most. The firm is known for its kind, curious experts who listen closely and care deeply about client success as they help clients transform energy markets, modernise financial platforms, expand telecoms and digital networks through advanced data analytics, enable digital services in government, and unlock growth in consumer sectors.

Certified as a Great Place to Work around the world, Baringa has been recognised by the Financial Times in 22 categories of its UK Leading Management Consultants rankings, and by Forbes for four consecutive years as one of the World’s Best Management Consulting Firms.

Our Solutions & AI Lab (SAIL) practice are looking for an experienced AI Architect to join the team.

Our Solutions & AI Labs practice helps clients control their data, turn it into actionable insight, and better leverage it through AI and Machine Learning solutions embedded directly into business processes. We support clients across a range of industries and offer deepexpertisein AI/ML, Cloud, Platform Engineering and Managed Solutions.

We are looking for an experienced Senior Manager to serve as an AI Architect — someone who can design the end-to-end architecture for enterprise AI platforms, lead consultancy engagements, and grow our AI & Solutions Engineering capability.

The AI Architect role owns the technical blueprint for AI-enabled solutions delivered in and around our clients’ environments, combining deep architectural specialism with the commercial and leadership skills to shape and grow our practice. This is a role for someone who thrives at the intersection of client advisory,AIplatform architecture and hands-on delivery leadership — and who has a genuine passion for bringing AI systems to production at scale.

What you will be doing

As a Senior Manager and AI Architect, you will own and lead the architecture of complex AI programmes end-to-end — from shaping the opportunity and winning the work, through solution design, deliverygovernanceand team leadership. You will bring SME-level depth in enterprise AI architecture and apply it to create real, lasting value for our clients.

Although we do not expect you to be an expert in every technology listed below simultaneously, our team consists of people who can advise clients as well as bring deep technical knowledge when needed. Key responsibilities span the following areas.

Engagement & delivery leadership

• Own and lead the architecture of complex AI and data transformation engagements, taking accountability for solution design, quality, technicalriskand client outcomes.

• Lead and resource multi-disciplinary delivery teams — architects, engineers, datascientistsand consultants — providing clear direction, technicaloversightand people development.

• Manage engagement resourcing: forecast team requirements, work with practice leadership to staff engagements, and develop the talent pipeline through mentoring of junior practitioners.

• Proactivelyidentifyand manage delivery and architectural risks in complex stakeholder environments, escalating appropriately andmaintainingclient confidence throughout.

• Communicate clearly to both technical teams and senior client stakeholders, translating architectural complexity into actionable insight and decisive recommendation.

• Conduct rigorous architecture and design reviewsand uphold engineering standards across every engagement you lead.

Stakeholder management & advisory

• Act as a trusted advisor to client architects, CTOs, CDAOs and engineering leads, earning trust through depth of knowledge and a demonstrable deliverytrack record.

• Build andmaintainstrong, senior client relationships, navigating competing priorities across business,technologyand risk functions.

• Facilitate architecture workshops and decision forums, driving alignment across diverse stakeholder groups and securing buy-in for target-state designs.

• Translate business strategy into architectural roadmaps, sequencinginvestmentand change in a way that balances ambition with deliverability.

Business development & bid support

• Play a leading role in business development:identifyingnew opportunities, shaping propositions, and supporting or leading bids and tender responses for AI and technology engagements.

• Contribute to proposal writing, articulating our capabilities and differentiators, including authoring technical and architecture sections of bid responses to client tenders and RFPs.

• Support practice-level growth initiatives, including account planning, capability development, and go-to-market positioning for AI architecture and solutions engineering services.

Technical architecture — what you will design

You will be the design authority for enterprise AI platforms, able to reason across the full stack and make credible technology selections. We expect expert-level depth in several of the areas below and working knowledge across the rest.

AI platform & cloud architecture

• Architect AI andDataPlatforms using a mix of technologies including Databricks, Snowflake,Claude Enterpriseand the native services of Azure,AWSand GCP-selecting the right tool for the workload rather than defaulting to a single vendor.

• Design for scalability, security, costefficiencyand multi-cloud / hybrid patterns, with a strong grasp of containerisation, infrastructure-as-code, event-drivenarchitecturesand CI/CD.

• Balance technical excellence with delivery pragmatism and commercial realities, championing the path from prototype to production.

Enterprise AI ecosystem integration

• Bring awareness of the broader enterprise landscape and how AI integrates with core operational systems such as SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow and other systems of record and engagement.

• Design integration patterns that let AI capabilities interoperate safely with enterprise data, identity,workflowand process automation platforms– including MCP and A2A and how these capabilities enable an enterprise Agent mesh.

• Understand the data,governanceand change implications of embedding AI into mission-critical enterprise processes.

Orchestration & control plane

• Architect the orchestration and control-plane layer that governs how AI capabilities are exposed,routedand managed across the enterprise.

• Design MCP, AI and LLM gateway layers for secure,observableand policy-controlled access to models and tools.

• Design agent and skills registries — including recommending suitable technologies and patterns — to enable discovery,reuseand governance of agentic capabilities.

• Define the control plane for routing, rate limiting, cost management, modelselectionand version control across multiple model providers.

AI solution design

• Design retrieval and reasoning architectures including RAG, corrective RAG (CRAG), and agentic patterns, selecting the right approach for a given business problem.