Principal AI Architect

MSC Industrial Supply Co.; Melville (NY); On-site; USD 139,000 - 217,000; Full time

Job summary

MSC Industrial Supply Co. seeks a Principal AI Architect to lead enterprise AI strategy, define reference architectures, and collaborate with Security, Cloud, Data Platform, and App teams.

You will translate AI models into scalable, production-grade software and guide cross-functional professionals to ensure alignment with MSC's standards. The role emphasizes agentic AI, tool-calling, and responsible AI guardrails, with leadership across data scientists, MLOps, and developers to advance

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/AI/Software Eng required; master's preferred.
• 5+ years of technical leadership architecting AI/ML systems.
• 10+ years in software engineering, enterprise architecture, or ML/AI infrastructure.
• Experience with top cloud providers (GCP, Azure), Databricks, Delta Lake, and ML platforms (Vertex AI, Azure ML).
• Proven track record shipping complex ML solutions, semantic search, multi-agent orchestration, or RAG architectures.
• Direct experience architecting agentic AI systems including agent orchestration, autonomous tool-calling, and human-in-the-loop safety controls.

Responsibilities

• Own AI and agentic systems architecture roadmap and technical direction.
• Set enterprise AI standards, patterns, and quality baselines.
• Define secure, scalable reference architectures and enable production-grade deployment.
• Collaborate with security, cloud, data platform, and app teams for integrated AI environments.
• Guide data scientists, MLOps, and developers; review code for alignment with design.

Skills

AI/ML system architecture

Technical leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Production-grade AI systems

Agentic AI / autonomous tool-calling

Security & compliance

Communication with stakeholders

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/AI/Software Engineering

Master's degree preferred

Tools

GCP

Azure

Databricks

Delta Lake

Vertex AI

Azure ML

LangChain

LangGraph

Hugging Face

Ollama

Scikit-Learn

Python

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

BUILD A BETTER CAREER WITH MSC

Serving customers and our community starts with the best people doing their best work. That is precisely what we have created at MSC Industrial Supply Co. We are a leading North American distributor of metalworking and maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO), products and services. We offer more than 2 million products and have over 80 years of experience across dozens of industries. We aim to execute our Built to Make You Better brand promise for all our stakeholders, including our associates.

Requisition ID :21691

Employment Type :Full Time

Job Category :Digital/IT

Work Location :Melville, NY (CSC)

Brief Position Summary

The Principal AI Architect serves as the principal technical design authority within the Enterprise Data Science & AI Center of Excellence (CoE). This role is responsible for architecting enterprise-grade AI and agentic reference frameworks, defining the core technical foundations that support them, and leading the design and implementation of the company's knowledge and context infrastructure. The role serves as a critical cross-functional bridge partnering with architects across Information Security, Cloud Infrastructure, Data Platform, and Application Development to ensure enterprise-wide technical alignment. The Principal AI Architect also guides technical delivery, working closely with data scientists, MLOps specialists, and AI developers to translate complex AI models into scalable, production-grade enterprise software.

Duties And Responsibilities

• Technical Strategy & Roadmap: Own the technical roadmap for AI and agentic systems architecture, establishing the standards, patterns, and technical direction that guide AI solution design across the enterprise.
• Final Architectural Authority: Own final decision-making authority on AI and agentic system architecture, resolving cross-team technical conflicts and ensuring consistency across all AI initiatives.
• Reference Architecture & Standards:Define, maintain, and enforce enterprise-wide AI reference architectures and technical quality evaluation baselines to ensure software reliability across all product teams.
• Sovereign Stack Design:Architect and maintain the secure, internal sovereign AI layered stack natively embedded inside enterprise Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Azure tenants.
• Cross-Architecture Partnership:Partner extensively with enterprise architects acrossInformation Security, Cloud Infrastructure, Data Platform, and Application Developmentto ensure AI environments are seamlessly integrated, securely isolated, cost-optimized, and compliant with broader infrastructure standards.
• Execution Team Collaboration: Set technical direction for data scientists, MLOps specialists, and AI developers by defining pipeline architecture, model deployment standards, and CI/CD quality gates. Conduct code reviews on key architectural components and integration points to ensure execution stays aligned with the broader AI system design.
• Semantic Context Layer Engineering:Design and build high-fidelity unified metadata environments, semantic graphs, vector pipelines, and enterprise Knowledge Graphs to fuel reliable multi-step agentic reasoning across functional boundaries.
• Model-Agnostic Infrastructure Stack:Establish modular tech stack pathways that decouple application logic from foundational models, enabling engineering teams to seamlessly evaluate, swap, or cascade underlying large language models (LLMs) and small language models (SLMs) without vendor lock-in.
• Modern Composable Core Integration:Collaborate with IT matrix teams to transition legacy technical debt into modern, API-driven pathways and wrappers optimized for agentic tool calling and autonomous execution workflows.
• Tech-Enabled Control Planes:Coordinate with Information Security architects to embed robust, programmatic Responsible AI guardrails directly into system designs, including data loss prevention (DLP), automated code kill-switches, and adversarial filtering mechanisms.
• Product Engineering Partnership:Partner explicitly with the AI Technical Product Manager to evaluate functional capabilities, provide technical scalability inputs, and map probabilistic reasoning logic onto reliable infrastructural components.
• Drive Continuous Improvement:Stay ahead of macroeconomic AI trends, frontier model developments, and emerging cloud platform capabilities to drive continuous improvement and maintain an ongoing structural competitive edge.
• Fosters the MSC Culture in the department and throughout the company to ensure fulfillment of MSC's vision and unity of purpose
• Participation in special projects and performs additional duties as required

Qualifications

• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, or a highly technical related engineering field is required; master's degree preferred
• Minimum of 5 years of technical leadership experience architecting AI/ML systems, setting technical standards for AI development teams, and guiding infrastructure and platform decisions to support model training and deployment.
• Minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in software engineering, enterprise architecture, or machine learning/AI infrastructure including experience designing and deploying production-grade AI systems at scale.
• Extensive, hands-on experience designing systems within top-tier cloud providers (specifically GCP and Azure), including big data platforms (e.g., Databricks, Delta Lake) and ML platforms (e.g., Vertex AI, Azure ML).
• Proven track record shipping complex machine learning solutions, semantic search systems, multi-agent orchestration, or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures into production.
• Direct experience architecting agentic AI systems including agent orchestration, autonomous tool-calling, and human-in-the-loop safety controls.
• Demonstrated experience setting AI/ML technical direction and architecture standards adopted across multiple teams and business units.

Bonus Points If You Have

• Strong expertise in cloud orchestration, API design, and microservices architecture, with working knowledge of CI/CD practices and tooling (e.g., Azure DevOps, Git).
• Hands-on mastery of advanced AI/ML orchestration tools and frameworks, including LangChain, LangGraph, Hugging Face, Ollama, Scikit-Learn, Python ecosystem libraries, and container environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong understanding of generative AI fundamentals, including large language models, prompt engineering, transformer architectures, vector embeddings, and vector database design.
• Practical understanding of common ML/AI use cases (e.g., recommendation systems, forecasting, churn prediction) sufficient to architect scalable, production-grade infrastructure for them.
• Expert familiarity with enterprise architecture reference frameworks and their application to non-deterministic, probabilistic AI ecosystems.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present complex architectural decisions clearly to both executive stakeholders and hands-on technical teams.
• Self-directed and comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy, architecting complex, multi-tenant systems with minimal day-to-day oversight.

Other Requirements

• Position requires up to 10% of travel
• This position may require access to International Traffic in Arms Regulations Information ( ITAR ) and/or Controlled Unclassified Information ( CUI )
• INDICATES ESSENTIAL DUTIES

To perform this job successfully an associate must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of knowledge, experience level and abilities required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential duties.

Compensation starting at $138,500 - $216,559 depending on candidate location and experience.

The salary range represented is based on similar roles in comparable industries, and the cost of labor in respective cities. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's relevant experience, education requirements and peer pay equity. The Company reserves the right to modify the range as market conditions change.

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa for this position at this time.

This job posting will remain open for a minimum of 3 business days from the original posting date or longer as needed to fill the position.

WHY MSC?

People. Collaboration. Insight. That's how you build something that works. Built on a foundation of trust, MSC works side by side with our customers to help them drive business results. With more than one million product offerings and 80+ years of experience across industries, MSC strives to help our customers achieve greater productivity, profitability, and growth through inventory management and other innovative supply chain solutions. We care about our associates and have programs in place to help our 6,500+ team members achieve their potential.

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU

Our associates are our top priority and investing in their well-being is one way we execute our Built to Make You Better brand promise. Alongside competitive pay, we have a comprehensive benefits program to support you and your family's health, well-being and financial future. We offer dynamic healthcare plans, generous 401K and stock purchasing programs, tuition reimbursement opportunities, and paid time away for holidays, vacations, and illness. Visit our page for a better look at our extensive benefits: Your Future Benefits.

You will also have the opportunity to join our Associate Inclusion Circles: Women, Pride, Black, Generational, Veterans, HOLA, and Able. These circles are open to all associates and are designed to promote awareness, collaboration, and respect.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT

At MSC, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all qualified applicants and our associates without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation or any category protected by applicable law. Accommodation requests can be made at any stage of the recruitment process; applicants are asked to make their needs/requirements known.

Please note that MSC uses electronic monitoring and system logs in its workplace, including monitoring of Company-provided systems and collaboration tools, as permitted by applicable law.