Principal Architect (AI)

Brightside; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Brightside is seeking a Principal AI Architect to own the design and build of its AI agent platform. This senior, hands-on role will work with the engineering team to architect and ship production systems, including a real-time agent layer that interfaces with live conversations and CRM data.

You will drive end-to-end architecture for both human-assisted and autonomous agent modes, govern prompts, and ensure latency budgets meet sub-second requirements in a regulated fintech environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering or systems architecture.
• Production experience building real-time AI systems with sub-second latency.
• Hands-on experience with Amazon Bedrock, AWS Lambda, and Kinesis.
• Multi-agent system design experience including orchestration patterns.
• Strong data architecture foundation and CRM data patterns.
• Experience in regulated environments (fintech/financial services/healthcare) with privacy and compliance awareness.

Responsibilities

• Design and own the real-time multi-agent orchestration layer (session supervisor, domain clusters, escalation arbiter, conversation manager).
• Define agent routing logic, context sharing, tool use, and latency budgets across 18+ agents.
• Architect the real-time pipeline: Connectors and services (e.g., Amazon Connect, Lambda, Bedrock, streaming) to feat capabilities.
• Own the dual-mode agent architecture (human-assisted and autonomous).
• Govern the prompt architecture, evaluation harness, and data schemas for domain knowledge bases.

Skills

Real-time AI systems

Multi-agent design

Amazon Bedrock

Latency optimization

Tools

Amazon Bedrock

AWS Lambda

Kinesis

ElastiCache Redis

DynamoDB

Aurora PostgreSQL

Aurora MySQL

Job description

We are looking for a Principal AI Architect to own the design and build of Brightside’s AI agent platform. This is a senior, hands on role. You will work directly alongside Jacky Chiu and the engineering team to architect and ship production systems, not design from a distance. The core system you will build is a realtime agent layer that listens to live conversations between Financial Assistants and clients, understands what is happening turn by turn, surfaces intelligent coaching to the FA in under 2 seconds, and writes structured data back to the CRM. As the platform matures, this same agent layer will conduct client conversations autonomously.

We value personal connection.

What this role isn't!

A governance role. An advisory role. A research role. Or a people-management role. It is an execution oriented architecture role. You will design it and help build it.

What You Will Own

Real‑Time Agent Architecture

• Design and own the multi‑agent orchestration layer - session supervisor, domain clusters, escalation arbiter, and conversation manager
• Define agent routing logic, context sharing, tool use, and latency budgets across 18+ agents
• Architect the real‑time pipeline: Amazon Connect → Contact Lens → Kinesis → Lambda → Bedrock → WebSocket push to FA panel
• Own the dual‑mode agent architecture: human‑assisted mode (agent coaches the FA) and autonomous mode (agent conducts the client conversation directly)

LLM Systems & Prompt Engineering Governance

• Define model selection and routing across low‑latency and reasoning‑intensive agent tiers
• Govern the prompt architecture: structured agent prompt standards, runtime domain knowledge injection, and conditional output formatting across delivery surfaces
• Build and own the eval harness - schema validation, behavioral regression testing, latency profiling
• Design the domain knowledge base structure across the full financial use case library - 8 domains, 49 use case types

Data Architecture & CRM Integration

• Own the data model underlying the AI platform: client financial profiles, cases, goals, options, outcomes, and financial impact measurement
• Architect the CRM sync layer - real‑time field writes after FA confirmation, human correction logging as training signal
• Define canonical data models across clients, employers, financial products, and outcomes
• Ensure data integrity across Aurora PostgreSQL (new CRM) and Aurora MySQL (existing platform)

AI Infrastructure & Platform

• Own the AWS Bedrock‑native inference infrastructure - async invocations, Knowledge Bases, RAG pipelines
• Design the session state layer: ElastiCache Redis for hot state, DynamoDB for durable session records
• Define AI governance standards: model evaluation, monitoring, explainability, and compliance in a regulated fintech environment
• Evaluate and guide decisions on model providers, orchestration frameworks, and platform tooling

What We’re Looking For

Required

• 10+ years in software engineering or systems architecture, with significant hands‑on experience in the last 3 years
• Production experience building real‑time AI systems - specifically systems that operate on a per‑turn, sub‑second latency budget
• Hands‑on experience with Amazon Bedrock, AWS Lambda, and Kinesis - not just familiarity, but have hit their limits and worked around them
• Multi‑agent system design experience - orchestration patterns, agent handoff, context sharing, structured output validation
• Strong data architecture foundation - relational modeling, event‑driven systems, CRM data patterns
• Experience in a regulated environment (fintech, financial services, or healthcare) with an understanding of privacy and compliance requirements
• Comfortable operating in a small, fast‑moving team where you design and build - not just review and approve

Strong Advantage

• Experience building voice or conversation intelligence systems (contact center AI, real‑time transcription pipelines, live agent coaching tools)
• Hands‑on experience with Amazon Connect and Contact Lens
• Background in conversational AI product companies (Cresta, Observe.AI, Cogito, Replicant, or similar)
• Experience with LLM prompt engineering at a systems level - eval harnesses, versioned prompt governance, regression testing
• Prior experience as a lead architect at a Series B‑D company where you were one of a small number of senior technical voices

How You’ll Work

• Hands‑on and opinionated - you form views, explain them clearly, and update them when wrong
• Oriented toward production outcomes, not theoretical elegance
• Comfortable saying no to poor architectural decisions and explaining why
• Willing to be in the weeds - debugging a Bedrock invocation, profiling a latency spike, reviewing a schema change
• Balancing experimentation with rigor in a regulated fintech environment

Why Brightside:

For our clients - our mission is clear. To improve the financial health of working families. Brightside is an employee benefit with a brand‑new approach to personal finance. We offer unique solutions to help with anything related to finances, emotions and behaviors that can impact our clients. We take a holistic view to provide unbiased and confidential assistance through an unmatched blend of products, technology and true human care. Our goal is to make it easier for our clients to understand their options to obtain long‑term financial health and gain peace of mind when it comes to financial matters.

For our employees - we believe in inspiring careers, a great life/work balance and meaningful work that truly makes a difference in the lives of working families. Your work will have direct impact on the lives of our clients. You will have the opportunity to see a growing start‑up from the inside out and see how passionate our employees are about the work we do and the outcomes we are creating for others.