Principal AI Architect — Enterprise AI & Cloud Security

Lincoln Motor Company; Helena (MT); On-site; USD 133,000 - 251,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Vehicle discount program

Tuition assistance

Paid time off

Job summary

Ford Credit is seeking a Principal AI Architect to shape its enterprise AI strategy and deliver secure, cloud-native, production-ready systems. This leader will manage AI, cloud, and security architects and drive reusable standards and practical roadmaps across business and technology teams.

The role focuses on building an AI-native software delivery lifecycle with measurable improvements in delivery and risk management, while guiding a team of architects toward independent capability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS, engineering, information systems, cybersecurity, or related field.
• At least 12 years of progressive technology experience, with 8+ years in architecture roles.
• Experience architecting and operating enterprise AI/ML systems in production.
• Deep cloud architecture experience on Google Cloud and strong security expertise (Zero Trust).
• Ability to communicate complex technical and investment trade-offs to executives and engineers.
• Formal people-management experience.

Responsibilities

• Define Ford Credit’s multi-year enterprise AI architecture strategy and priorities.
• Establish an AI-native software delivery lifecycle with explicit specifications and evidence loops.
• Create reusable patterns for architecture manifests, plans, contracts, and governance.
• Architect production agentic systems integrating models, memory, tools, and orchestration.
• Define autonomy, checkpoints, and auditable decision trails for consequential actions.
• Establish evaluation practices including automated testing and production monitoring.
• Set patterns for authoritative enterprise knowledge and durable memory.
• Design and govern scalable AI applications on Google Cloud using Vertex AI, GKE, BigQuery, Pub/Sub.
• Embed Zero-Trust, data protection, and supply-chain security into AI and cloud architectures.
• Guide modernization of hybrid and legacy systems with modular architectures and APIs.
• Turn architectural decisions into reference architectures, runbooks, and platform capabilities.
• Advise senior leaders and align across engineering, cybersecurity, data, privacy, risk, and operations.
• Lead and develop an architect team with clear priorities and succession planning.
• Use enterprise-approved AI tools responsibly for architecture research and drafting.

Skills

Executive communication

People management

Cloud architecture

AI/ML systems

Security architecture

Risk assessment

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field

Master’s degree in a related discipline

Tools

Google Cloud

Vertex AI

GKE

Cloud Run

BigQuery

Pub/Sub

Job description

Ford Credit is seeking a Principal AI Architect to shape its enterprise AI strategy and deliver secure, cloud-native, production-ready systems. This leader will manage AI, cloud, and security architects and drive reusable standards and practical roadmaps across business and technology teams.

The role focuses on building an AI-native software delivery lifecycle with measurable improvements in delivery and risk management, while guiding a team of architects toward independent capability.