Principal AI Architect (Platform Modernization)

TEK Systems

United States

On-site

USD 191,000 - 286,000

Full time

3 days ago

Be an early applicant

Get a reply from this employer

Your resume and cover letter, tailored to exactly what they’re hiring for.

Get past ATS filters

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental & vision

401(k) retirement plan

PTO / time off

Competitive compensation

Life insurance

Job summary

TEKsystems seeks a Principal AI Architect to steer enterprise AI strategy and lead high‑impact client engagements across cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, with a primary focus on Anthropic technologies and OpenAI partnerships. This senior role blends executive vision with hands‑on design and prototyping for production AI.

Up to 25% travel is expected. You will mentor architects, shape solutions, and collaborate with delivery teams to ensure measurable business outcomes, governance,

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
10+ years of enterprise technology experience with 5+ years leading architecture for complex enterprise solutions.
2+ years of hands-on experience delivering production generative AI, LLM, and agentic solutions using Claude and/or frontier models.

Responsibilities

Define end-to-end architecture for large AI programs spanning rollout, custom agent development, integration, security, governance, observability, and operations.
Establish target-state architecture, guardrails, and decision frameworks aligned to business priorities and delivery constraints.
Lead AI discovery and readiness assessments, identify and prioritize use cases with business value, feasibility, risk, and readiness.
Conduct architecture workshops, prototypes, proofs of concept, and evaluations with clear success criteria and production path.
Join solution calls and lead architecture on customer engagements, balancing priorities and client needs.
Build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and present architecture options and AI strategy to technical and non‑technical audiences.
Guide enterprise rollouts of Anthropic models, including adoption strategy, security design, and integration.

Skills

Executive leadership

Enterprise architecture

Client engagement

Strategic planning

Mentoring teams

Public speaking

Travel readiness

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master’s degree preferred

Tools

Claude API

Anthropic

OpenAI API

AWS

Azure

GCP

Salesforce

Bedrock

Job description

Overview

The Principal AI Architect is a senior leadership role within the AI Shared Services team, accountable for shaping technical strategy, leading complex customer engagements, and serving as a top-level technical authority for clients, sellers, partners, and internal delivery teams. This role architects and governs large-scale enterprise AI adoption and custom agentic solution programs, with a primary focus on Anthropic technologies and measurable business outcomes. This position is differentiated from Senior Architect roles by the scale and criticality of engagements and the breadth of cross‑functional leadership. Principal Architects move from one strategic initiative to the next, joining solution calls, leading architecture on customer engagements, and mentoring other architects. This is a hands‑on architecture role requiring the ability to move between executive-level strategy, detailed technical design, and hands‑on prototyping and technical contribution. The ideal candidate has deep experience architecting enterprise solutions on a major platform such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or Salesforce, and has applied that depth to production AI. While Anthropic is the primary focus, this role must stay versatile and extend to OpenAI and other technology partners as the team’s partnerships grow. This role may require up to 25% travel. The Principal AI Architect is a senior leadership role within the AI Shared Services team, accountable for shaping technical strategy, leading complex customer engagements, and serving as a top-level technical authority for clients, sellers, partners, and internal delivery teams. This role architects and governs large-scale enterprise AI adoption and custom agentic solution programs, with a primary focus on Anthropic technologies and measurable business outcomes. This position is differentiated from Senior Architect roles by the scale and criticality of engagements and the breadth of cross‑functional leadership. Principal Architects move from one strategic initiative to the next, joining solution calls, leading architecture on customer engagements, and mentoring other architects. This is a hands‑on architecture role requiring the ability to move between executive-level strategy, detailed technical design, and hands‑on prototyping and technical contribution. The ideal candidate has deep experience architecting enterprise solutions on a major platform such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or Salesforce, and has applied that depth to production AI. While Anthropic is the primary focus, this role must stay versatile and extend to OpenAI and other technology partners as the team’s partnerships grow. This role may require up to 25% travel.

Responsibilities

Strategic Architecture Leadership

Define end-to-end architecture for large, complex AI programs spanning enterprise rollout, custom agent and application development, integration, security, governance, observability, and operations.
Establish target-state architecture, guardrails, and decision frameworks that align business priorities, engineering constraints, and delivery execution.
Serve as the escalation point for the most complex architecture, integration, performance, and governance challenges.

AI Discovery and Customer Engagement

Lead AI discovery and readiness assessments, helping clients identify, qualify, and prioritize use cases based on business value, feasibility, risk, and readiness.
Lead architecture workshops, prototypes, proofs of concept, and technical evaluations, establishing clear success criteria and a credible path from experimentation to production.
Join solution calls and lead architecture on customer engagements, moving between initiatives as priorities and customer needs require.
Build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and present architecture options, tradeoffs, roadmaps, and AI strategy to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
Help shape follow‑on work by connecting technical possibilities to business priorities.

Delivery Leadership

Guide enterprise rollouts of Claude, including adoption strategy, security and access design, integration, and measurable usage outcomes.
Lead the design and build of custom agents, applications, and solutions using Anthropic APIs and SDKs, from roadmap through production release, optimization, and ongoing evolution.
Lead and coordinate other architects and technical leads on engagements, ensuring technical quality, risk management, and alignment to client outcomes.
Define measurable technical and business success criteria, and use evaluation, observability, reliability, and adoption signals to guide optimization.

Partner and Cross‑Team Collaboration

Manage the working relationship with Anthropic, including engaging their solution and field teams, escalating technical issues, sharing customer and field insights, and staying current through roadmap and product briefings. Extend the same approach to OpenAI and future technology partners.
Collaborate with the AWS, Azure, GCP, and Salesforce teams when customers access Anthropic models through those platforms.
Join customer work already underway on another platform, for example a solution using Claude through Amazon Bedrock, to review designs and advise on model and agent architecture.

Team Leadership and Mentorship

Mentor architects, engineers, and technical leads across engagements, and elevate architecture quality and engineering best practices.
Support recruiting, interviewing, talent development, and succession planning for the team.
Shape the evolution of the AI Shared Services team by building offerings, accelerators, reusable assets, reference architectures, and technical standards, translating emerging AI and agentic capabilities into repeatable use cases.
Contribute thought leadership through workshops, enablement, and client‑facing artifacts, while staying current on model releases, agentic patterns, and the AI partner ecosystem.

Responsible AI, Security, and Governance

Design AI solutions with identity, least‑privilege access, sensitive data protection, human‑in‑the‑loop controls, limits on agent authority, and auditability built in.
Address prompt injection and other adversarial risks, privacy and compliance requirements, along with cost management, model and agent evaluation, monitoring, and release acceptance criteria.

Additional Responsibilities

Support pre‑sales and pursuit activities, including solution strategy, estimates, risk reviews, staffing assumptions, and executive‑level client conversations.
Partner with Solution Architects, Solution Executives, and delivery leaders to shape commercially sound, technically credible solutions.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
10+ years of experience in enterprise technology, software engineering, cloud, architecture, or professional services, including 5+ years leading architecture for complex enterprise solutions.
Deep hands‑on experience with at least one major cloud or enterprise platform such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or Salesforce, including design and delivery for enterprise clients.
2+ years of hands‑on experience designing and delivering production generative AI, LLM, and agentic solutions, with demonstrated experience using Claude and/or comparable frontier models.
Experience architecting and deploying solutions using Claude API, Claude Code, Claude for Enterprise, and Anthropic agent development tooling, together with agent integration standards and patterns such as MCP. This includes deployment through cloud AI platforms such as Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Microsoft Azure.
Strong technical competency in agent and multi‑agent orchestration, tool/function calling, memory and state management, RAG, vector and hybrid retrieval, prompt and context engineering, model and agent evaluation, observability, and production AI operations.
Experience integrating AI and agentic solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, data platforms, identity systems, and business workflows, with a strong understanding of security, governance, reliability, and cost optimization.
Hands‑on experience with Python and one or more additional programming or scripting languages, along with CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
Demonstrated success leading large, complex programs across multiple teams, including leading architecture review boards and making sound decisions in ambiguous or high‑pressure environments.
Strong executive communication skills, with the ability to explain architecture and AI strategy to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
Ability to travel up to 25% to client locations and work effectively across distributed teams and time zones.

Desired Qualifications

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
15+ years of experience in information technology and/or professional services, with a strong record of enterprise transformation leadership.
Experience with OpenAI technologies, including ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI API, Codex, and OpenAI Agents SDK.
Demonstrated judgment across multiple model families, including guiding model selection and portability decisions for clients.
Experience building or scaling teams, delivery capabilities, or strategic offerings, and managing technology partner relationships.
Strong command of DevOps, MLOps or LLMOps, and platform engineering principles, including release engineering and policy‑driven automation.
Track record of mentoring senior architects and influencing executive stakeholders in highly consultative, client‑facing roles.

Certifications

Relevant cloud or AI certifications are preferred but not required, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud architecture and AI credentials.
Equivalent hands‑on experience designing and delivering production AI solutions will be considered.

***Posting Close Date: 11/12/2026***

We reserve the right to pay above or below the posted wage based on factors unrelated to sex, race, or any other protected classification.

US Salary range:$190,600-$286,000 Potential bonus up to: $50,000

Compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors which may include, but are not limited to, education, experience, skills, and geographic location. As an internal Allegis Employee exploring roles within TEKsystems Global Services, hiring eligibility and maintaining existing ancillary benefits are subject to change with transfer from one role to another. Please reach out to Talent Mobility for specific questions: TGS_Talent_Ops@teksystems.com.

Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to specific elections, plan, or program terms. If eligible, the benefits available for this temporary role may include the following: