Senior AI Systems Architect — Cloud, Data & ML

Openkrill; United States; Remote; USD 166,000 - 228,000; Full time

Job summary

Robots & Pencils seeks a Principal Architect to lead design and delivery of multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. You’ll own architectural direction and act as senior technical voice on engagements with leadership and clients.

You’ll mentor engineers, define architecture across cloud infra, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads, and guide security, governance, and observability. The role demands hands-on leadership and breadth.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in technical leadership roles.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms and cloud-native architectures (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Strong background in microservices, serverless, containers, and event-driven systems (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Lambda, EventBridge)
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code and CI/CD (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, GitHub Actions)
• Strong data architecture expertise across relational, NoSQL, and big data systems (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka)
• Hands-on experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT pipelines, and orchestration (e.g., Airflow, Prefect, dbt)
• Strong experience designing AI/ML systems for production, including LLMs, MLOps, and model serving (e.g., SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow)
• Solid understanding of networking, security, identity, and access management in cloud environments
• Experience with governance, compliance, and observability frameworks
• Strong software engineering skills (Python, APIs, containerization)
• Track record of senior technical leadership and mentoring experienced engineers
• Strong stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to translate technical depth across audiences
• Demonstrable usage of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor
• Multi-cloud architecture experience, AI ethics or responsible AI experience, or enterprise architecture certifications (e.g., TOGAF, AWS/Azure/GCP) is 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 (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka).
• Design AI/ML systems including model serving, MLOPs pipelines, feature stores, and LLM-based applications (e.g., SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face).
• Define infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and DevOps standards across engagements (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions).
• Drive performance, scalability, cost, and reliability optimization across deployed systems.
• Ensure architecture meets security, governance, and compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2).
• Lead cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives.
• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace

Skills

Cloud platforms

Cloud-native

Microservices

Serverless

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

IaC

Security & IAM

Data architecture

ETL/ELT

AI/ML systems

MLOps

Python

Communication skills

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Pulumi

GitHub Actions

Airflow

Prefect

dbt

SageMaker

Vertex AI

MLflow

Hugging Face

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Snowflake

BigQuery

Spark

Kafka

Job description

Robots & Pencils seeks a Principal Architect to lead design and delivery of multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. You’ll own architectural direction and act as senior technical voice on engagements with leadership and clients.

You’ll mentor engineers, define architecture across cloud infra, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads, and guide security, governance, and observability. The role demands hands-on leadership and breadth.