Principal AI Architect

Jobtailor; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor seeks a senior architect to own the system design for agentic capabilities, including orchestration, context and state, tool boundaries, and reliability patterns for non-deterministic systems.

You will prototype to validate architectural decisions before teams commit to them at scale and partner with Data Science to integrate agent and model work with platform services, APIs, event streaming, and storage.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with leadership in architecting production systems
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, service boundaries, consistency, event-driven architecture, and API design (REST; gRPC a plus)
• Hands-on experience building and prototyping agentic or LLM-powered systems in production, including memory and state management, tool integration, and guardrail patterns

Responsibilities

• Own the system design for agentic capabilities, including orchestration, context/state, tool boundaries, and reliability patterns for non-deterministic systems
• Prototype to validate architectural decisions before teams commit to them at scale
• Partner with Data Science to integrate agent/model work with platform services, APIs, event streaming, and storage
• Review engineering TDRs and provide substantive feedback on architecture and risk
• Build consensus and alignment across engineering teams
• Drive AI-assisted and agentic development adoption across engineering
• Mentor senior and staff engineers on agentic system design
• Communicate architectural decisions and trade-offs to executives and customers

Skills

Distributed Systems

Architectural Design

Prototyping

Technical Writing

Mentorship

Leadership

Influencing Without Authority

Communication

Consensus Building

Agentic/LLM Systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Node.js

TypeScript

PostgreSQL

ClickHouse

Kafka

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

• Own the system design for agentic capabilities, including orchestration, context and state, tool boundaries, and reliability patterns for non-deterministic systems
• Write TDRs, design documents, and standards that set architectural direction across teams
• Prototype to validate architectural decisions before teams commit to them at scale
• Partner with Data Science to integrate agent and model work with platform services, APIs, event streaming, and storage
• Review engineering TDRs and provide substantive feedback on architecture and risk
• Build consensus and alignment across engineering teams
• Drive AI-assisted and agentic development adoption across engineering
• Mentor senior and staff engineers on agentic system design
• Communicate architectural decisions and trade-offs to executives and customers
• Report to the Chief Architect and partner with engineering leadership, Product, and Data Science

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time as a senior, staff, or principal-level architect or technical lead designing production systems
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, including service boundaries, consistency models, event-driven architecture, API design (REST; gRPC familiarity a plus), and operating systems reliably at scale
• Hands-on experience building, prototyping, and architecting agentic or LLM-powered systems in production, including agent loop design, context engineering, MCP and tool/function-calling integration, RAG architectures, memory and state management, and reliability and guardrail patterns for non-deterministic systems
• Working knowledge of data engineering fundamentals, including data modeling, pipeline design, and streaming vs. batch
• Track record of influencing without authority and earning genuine technical buy-in
• Strong technical writing and mentorship skills, including TDRs, design docs, and decision records
• Ability to communicate complex architectural decisions clearly to executives and customers
• Comfort operating as a senior individual contributor
• Familiarity with multi-agent orchestration patterns (preferred)
• Experience with Node.js/TypeScript, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, Kafka, AWS, and Kubernetes (preferred)
• Experience leading AI-assisted or agentic development adoption across an engineering organization (preferred)
• Experience partnering with data science or ML teams on productionizing their work (preferred)
• Cybersecurity industry background (preferred)
• No immigration sponsorship is provided for this position

Core Competencies

Demonstrates deep expertise in distributed systems and agentic capabilities, with a strong focus on architectural design, prototyping, and integration of AI-assisted systems. Proven ability to mentor engineers and communicate complex decisions effectively to stakeholders.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Distributed Systems Expertise
• Architectural Design
• Prototyping Agentic Systems
• Technical Writing Skills
• Mentorship and Leadership

ATS Optimization Keywords

Hard Skills

• Software Engineering
• API Design
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Data Modeling
• Pipeline Design
• Agent Loop Design
• Context Engineering
• Memory Management
• Reliability Patterns
• Guardrail Patterns

Soft Skills

• Influencing Without Authority
• Communication Skills
• Consensus Building
• Mentorship

Industry Keywords

• Cybersecurity
• AI-Assisted Development
• Agentic Systems
• Multi-Agent Orchestration

Tools & Technologies

• Node.js
• TypeScript
• PostgreSQL
• ClickHouse
• Kafka
• AWS
• Kubernetes