Application Architect - AI Integration

IBM; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Consulting is seeking an Application Architect for AI Integration to design end-to-end architectures embedding AI capabilities into enterprise applications and workflows. The role involves translating business objectives into scalable designs, governing AI integration, and balancing vendor services with custom development across large-scale systems.

Responsibilities include defining reference architectures, ensuring performance, security, compliance, and cost objectives, and leading

Qualifications

• 12+ years of enterprise application architecture experience, with leadership in cross-domain target-state design.

Responsibilities

• Design reference architectures for AI services, models, and orchestration layers.
• Translate business objectives into scalable, policy-compliant designs balancing vendor services with custom development.
• Drive governance for prompts, guardrails, and lifecycle management across AI integration.

Skills

Enterprise architecture experience

Lead/principal architect

Microservices design

API-first architectures

AWS cloud architecture

Data architecture

AI integration design

Governance frameworks

Regulatory/compliance awareness

Technical leadership

Agile / scaled delivery

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Tools

Kafka

SQS

EventBridge

API Gateway

Lambda

RDS/Aurora

EKS

Bedrock

SageMaker

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Job description

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

Your role and responsibilities

As an Application Architect for AI Integration, this role is responsible for designing and governing end-to-end architectures that embed AI capabilities into enterprise applications and workflows. The Application Architect collaborates with stakeholders to translate business objectives into scalable designs, balancing vendor-managed services with custom development, and drives governance for AI integration.

Your primary responsibilities will include:

• Designing Architectures: defining reference patterns for AI services, models, and orchestration layers to integrate seamlessly with existing systems, APIs, and data platforms.
• Collaborating with Stakeholders: translating business objectives into scalable, resilient, and policy-compliant designs, ensuring performance, security, compliance, and cost objectives are met.
• Governing AI Integration: driving governance for prompts, guardrails, and lifecycle management, ensuring observability, privacy, and responsible AI principles are embedded from design through operations.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

Core Architecture

• - 12+ years of enterprise application architecture experience, with at least 3 years in a lead or principal architect role owning cross-domain target-state design
• - Proven experience defining microservices, event-driven (Kafka/SQS/EventBridge), and API-first architectures at scale — including versioning, lifecycle governance, and breaking-change management
• - AWS cloud architecture (Solutions Architect Professional or equivalent depth) — EKS, RDS/Aurora, API Gateway, Lambda, SQS/SNS, MSK, and AI/ML services (Bedrock, SageMaker)
• - Data architecture experience — OLTP/OLAP separation, CDC patterns, data domain ownership, master data management, and real-time vs. batch pipeline design

AI & Agentic Architecture

• - Hands-on architecture experience designing systems that embed AI capabilities — RAG pipelines, LLM orchestration (LangChain, LlamaIndex, or equivalent), and agentic workflow patterns
• - Experience integrating AI/ML models into production enterprise systems — not just proof-of-concept — including model serving, prompt governance, output guardrails, and cost/latency management
• - Familiarity with AI governance frameworks — responsible AI principles, explainability requirements, audit trails for AI-assisted decisions — particularly in regulated industries
• - Experience evaluating and selecting AI services (managed APIs vs. self-hosted models) based on data privacy, compliance, and total cost of ownership constraints

Domain & Regulatory

• - Financial services or insurance domain experience — understanding of policy lifecycle, commission structures, agent licensing, or carrier integration is strongly preferred
• - Experience designing systems that operate under regulatory frameworks — FINRA, FSRA, SOC 2, GLBA, CCPA, or equivalent — with audit logging, data retention, and access control as first-class architecture concerns

Technical Leadership

• - Demonstrated ability to drive architecture decisions through ambiguity — producing clear documentation, facilitating design reviews, and building consensus across engineering and business stakeholders
• - Experience working in Agile/scaled delivery environments — integrating architecture practice into sprint cadence without becoming a bottleneck
• - Track record of mentoring senior engineers and establishing architecture standards that teams adopt and maintain

Preferred technical and professional experience

• - Experience with agent/broker distribution platforms, MLM commission hierarchies, or multi-carrier insurance marketplaces
• - Familiarity with ACORD standards, NIPR/Sircon integrations, or DTCC financial messaging
• - Experience with Valkey/Redis, Kafka, or distributed caching architecture in high-availability Kubernetes environments
• - Prior experience in a consultancy or systems integrator context — ability to operate as a trusted advisor alongside a client engineering team

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

• - Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
• - Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
• - Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
• - Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
• - Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

Is this role a commissionable/sales incentive based position?