Principal AI Architect: Cloud, Data & ML Strategy

Uncover; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 166,000 - 228,000; Full time

Job summary

Robots & Pencils seeks a Principal Architect to lead the design and delivery of complex, multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. You own architectural direction, mentor engineers, and serve as the senior technical voice on engagements with clients.

You will drive cloud-native architectures, data pipelines, ML workflows, security and governance, and partner with leadership to shape long-term strategy while delivering production-ready solutions.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with leadership responsibilities.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms and cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong background in microservices, serverless, containers, and event-driven systems (Kubernetes, Docker).
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code and CI/CD (Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, GitHub Actions).
• Strong data architecture experience across relational, NoSQL, and big data systems (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka).
• Hands-on experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT pipelines, and orchestration (Airflow, Prefect, dbt).
• Experience designing AI/ML systems for production, including LLMs, MLOps, and model serving (SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Security, identity and access management in cloud environments; governance and observability knowledge.
• Strong software engineering skills (Python, APIs, containerization).
• Track record of senior technical leadership and mentoring experienced engineers.
• Strong stakeholder communication skills; ability to translate depth to diverse audiences.
• Experience with AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor; multi-cloud architecture knowledge; enterprise architecture certifications (TOGAF, AWS/Azure/GCP) a plus.

Responsibilities

• Define technical strategy and lead architectural design across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems for end-to-end engagements.
• Architect scalable cloud-native solutions, including multi-cloud and hybrid strategies (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes).
• Design data architectures including warehouses, data lakes, and pipelines for batch and streaming workloads (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka).
• Design AI/ML systems including model serving, MLOps pipelines, feature stores, and LLM-based applications (SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face).
• Define infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and DevOps standards across engagements (Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions).
• Drive performance, scalability, cost, and reliability optimization across deployed systems.
• Ensure architecture meets security, governance, and compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2).
• Lead cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives.
• Bring an AI-forward mindset to daily work using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship high-quality work quickly.

Skills

Cloud platforms

Microservices

CI/CD

Data architecture

AI/ML systems

MLOps

Model serving

Kubernetes

Security & IAM

Governance & Compliance

Python

Stakeholder communication

Multi-cloud

TOGAF

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Lambda

EventBridge

Snowflake

BigQuery

Spark

Kafka

SageMaker

Vertex AI

MLflow

Hugging Face

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Robots & Pencils seeks a Principal Architect to lead the design and delivery of complex, multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. You own architectural direction, mentor engineers, and serve as the senior technical voice on engagements with clients.

You will drive cloud-native architectures, data pipelines, ML workflows, security and governance, and partner with leadership to shape long-term strategy while delivering production-ready solutions.