Solution Architect – Data & AI Solutions

EXL Talent Acquisition Team; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

EXL Talent Acquisition Team seeks a seasoned Solution Architect to lead presales, client engagement, and enterprise data/AI platform design in Bengaluru. You will architect data/AI demos, define event-driven architectures, and guide cross-functional teams from concept to proof-of-concept.

We value deep cloud expertise across multiple hyperscalers, strong governance knowledge, and hands-on leadership in scalable AI solutions. Join a fast-growing team shaping strategic client outcomes.

Job description

Key Responsibilities:

Presales & Client Engagement

• Partner with sales and industry teams to design client-ready demos, proof-of-concepts, and technical solution blueprints.
• Present complex architectures in a clear, business-outcome-driven manner to both executive and technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to RFP/RFI responses, solution proposals, and deal shaping.
• Act as a trusted advisor in client conversations, highlighting differentiators of Data & AI Solutions.

Solution Architecture & Demo Environments

• Architect distributed, scalable, and resilient data and AI platforms for presales demonstrations.
• Design abstraction layers for multi-model AI orchestration, including fallback logic, dynamic model switching, and cost control.
• Lead implementation of event-driven architectures using messaging frameworks (Kafka, Pulsar, SQS, etc.) and state machines.
• Build reusable, industry-specific demo environments leveraging hyperscaler services and data platforms.

Observability, Security & Compliance

• Define and enforce observability standards for demo and enterprise environments (logging, tracing, telemetry, real-time alerting).
• Implement zero-trust security models (RBAC/ABAC, IAM, OAuth2, encryption, API gateways).
• Ensure all demo and client environments meet compliance standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, SOC2.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work with Product, Data Science, Engineering, and Governance teams to align demos with business/regulatory needs.
• Collaborate with IMUs (verticals) to build domain-specific demo templates (e.g., Insurance claims, Healthcare payment integrity, Banking KYC/fraud, Retail personalization).
• Provide hands‑on support to engineering teams during delivery, troubleshooting, and performance tuning.

Innovation & Technical Leadership

• Stay ahead of hyperscaler advancements, AI/ML frameworks, and orchestration patterns.
• Drive technical due diligence, PoCs, and vendor/platform evaluations.
• Create technical artifacts (architecture diagrams, design patterns, runbooks).
• Mentor presales engineers and junior architects in solution design and client presentation skills.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• Certifications preferred:
  • Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Kubernetes / CNCF ecosystem.
• Architecture frameworks (TOGAF, SAFe).

Skills & Experience

Must-Have Skills & Experience

• 15+ years in software architecture, presales engineering, or enterprise data/AI platform design.
• Hands‑on expertise in at least two hyperscaler platforms:
  • Azure (Fabric, Synapse, Data Factory, Azure ML, Power BI).
  • AWS (Redshift, Glue, S3, SageMaker, Lake Formation).
  • GCP (BigQuery, Dataplex, Vertex AI, Pub/Sub).
• Proven experience architecting distributed systems, microservices, and scalable AI/ML platforms.
• Strong knowledge of Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata, Lineage, and DataOps.
• Expertise in event‑driven systems and asynchronous workflows.
• Hands‑on with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, ELK).
• Advanced programming with Python (async), TypeScript/JavaScript, or Go.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, service mesh (Istio), serverless design patterns.
• Experience with CI/CD automation, GitOps, Terraform, Helm.
• Strong presentation, storytelling, and client engagement skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with multi‑tenant SaaS platforms and usage‑based billing.
• Familiarity with data mesh, knowledge graphs, and semantic interoperability.
• Knowledge of frontend architecture patterns (micro‑frontends, data visualizations).
• Experience building presales demo or sandbox environments.

Exposure to agentic AI concepts and LLM‑based orchestration.

Presales & Client Engagement

• Partner with sales and industry teams to design client-ready demos, proof‑of‑concepts, and technical solution blueprints.
• Present complex architectures in a clear, business‑outcome‑driven manner to both executive and technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to RFP/RFI responses, solution proposals, and deal shaping.
• Act as a trusted advisor in client conversations, highlighting differentiators of Data & AI Solutions.

Solution Architecture & Demo Environments

• Architect distributed, scalable, and resilient data and AI platforms for presales demonstrations.
• Design abstraction layers for multi‑model AI orchestration, including fallback logic, dynamic model switching, and cost control.
• Lead implementation of event‑driven architectures using messaging frameworks (Kafka, Pulsar, SQS, etc.) and state machines.
• Build reusable, industry‑specific demo environments leveraging hyperscaler services and data platforms.

Observability, Security & Compliance

• Define and enforce observability standards for demo and enterprise environments (logging, tracing, telemetry, real‑time alerting).
• Implement zero‑trust security models (RBAC/ABAC, IAM, OAuth2, encryption, API gateways).
• Ensure all demo and client environments meet compliance standards such as HIPAA, GDPR, SOC2.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work with Product, Data Science, Engineering, and Governance teams to align demos with business/regulatory needs.
• Collaborate with IMUs (verticals) to build domain‑specific demo templates (e.g., Insurance claims, Healthcare payment integrity, Banking KYC/fraud, Retail personalization).
• Provide hands‑on support to engineering teams during delivery, troubleshooting, and performance tuning.

Innovation & Technical Leadership

• Stay ahead of hyperscaler advancements, AI/ML frameworks, and orchestration patterns.
• Drive technical due diligence, PoCs, and vendor/platform evaluations.
• Create technical artifacts (architecture diagrams, design patterns, runbooks).
• Mentor presales engineers and junior architects in solution design and client presentation skills.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• Certifications preferred:
  • Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Kubernetes / CNCF ecosystem.
• Architecture frameworks (TOGAF, SAFe).

Skills & Experience

Must-Have Skills & Experience

• 15+ years in software architecture, presales engineering, or enterprise data/AI platform design.
• Hands‑on expertise in at least two hyperscaler platforms:
  • Azure (Fabric, Synapse, Data Factory, Azure ML, Power BI).
  • AWS (Redshift, Glue, S3, SageMaker, Lake Formation).
  • GCP (BigQuery, Dataplex, Vertex AI, Pub/Sub).
• Proven experience architecting distributed systems, microservices, and scalable AI/ML platforms.
• Strong knowledge of Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata, Lineage, and DataOps.
• Expertise in event‑driven systems and asynchronous workflows.
• Hands‑on with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, ELK).
• Advanced programming with Python (async), TypeScript/JavaScript, or Go.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, service mesh (Istio), serverless design patterns.
• Experience with CI/CD automation, GitOps, Terraform, Helm.
• Strong presentation, storytelling, and client engagement skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with multi‑tenant SaaS platforms and usage‑based billing.
• Familiarity with data mesh, knowledge graphs, and semantic interoperability.
• Knowledge of frontend architecture patterns (micro‑frontends, data visualizations).
• Experience building presales demo or sandbox environments.

Exposure to agentic AI concepts and LLM‑based orchestration.