Sr. Applied Intelligence Architect

Lam Research; Fremont (CA); Hybrid; USD 166,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Lam Research in California is seeking a Senior Applied Intelligence Architect to define how the company acquires, evaluates, and deploys AI across enterprise operations, engineering workflows, software, and product experiences.

You will design model-agnostic interfaces, drive governance by design, and partner with cross‑functional teams to translate business needs into scalable intelligence platforms. The role blends research, architecture, and production engineering in a fast-moving environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 12+ years of relevant experience or equivalent practical experience.
• Master’s degree with 8+ years or PhD with 5+ years of experience preferred.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills are essential.

Responsibilities

• Define and own applied intelligence architecture and implementation roadmaps across various model types.
• Translate business and technical requirements into deployable intelligence solutions.
• Design model-agnostic interfaces and reusable contracts to reduce vendor lock-in.
• Define qualification and evaluation systems for grounded correctness, performance, safety, and cost.
• Create patterns for fine-tuning and deployment optimization.
• Architect closed-loop learning systems with governance, provenance, and auditability.
• Connect intelligence with enterprise tools, APIs, and data platforms securely.
• Lead architecture reviews, lighthouse programs, and production transitions.
• Collaborate with software, data, security, legal, and product teams to integrate intelligence into Lam products.
• Mentor engineers and communicate model/architecture trade-offs to technical and executive audiences.

Skills

Communication

Technical leadership

Applied AI systems

Distributed systems

Python / ML frameworks

Cloud / platform engineering

Stakeholder influence

Architecture design

Education

Bachelor's degree with 12+ years

Master's degree with 8+ years

PhD with 5+ years

Tools

Python

ML Frameworks

Kubernetes

MLflow

Job description

The group you’ll be a part of

The Enterprise AI team within Lam’s Office of the CTO helps the company apply machine intelligence responsibly across enterprise operations, engineering workflows, software and controls, and product experiences. The team develops shared AI platforms, intelligence architecture, knowledge and ontology services, developer capabilities, evaluation, governance, and adoption patterns so Lam teams can create secure, reusable AI solutions that improve as model capabilities advance.

The group you’ll be a part of

The Enterprise AI team within Lam’s Office of the CTO helps the company apply machine intelligence responsibly across enterprise operations, engineering workflows, software and controls, and product experiences. The team develops shared AI platforms, intelligence architecture, knowledge and ontology services, developer capabilities, evaluation, governance, and adoption patterns so Lam teams can create secure, reusable AI solutions that improve as model capabilities advance.

The impact you’ll make

As Senior Applied Intelligence Architect, you will establish how Lam selects, adapts, evaluates, routes, integrates, and governs commercial, open-weight, fine-tuned, specialized, and physics-informed intelligence. You will convert rapidly advancing AI research into deployed capabilities that produce measurable business, engineering, and product outcomes.

You will help ensure models remain replaceable, capabilities are composable and machine-consumable, actions are governed, and production outcomes strengthen future intelligence cycles. Your work will help Lam preserve technology choice, reduce vendor dependency, control cost, and build solutions that gain value as machine intelligence advances.

What You’ll Do

• Own Lam’s applied intelligence architecture and implementation roadmap across frontier, daily-driver, commercial, open-weight, fine-tuned, specialized, and physics or simulation-based models.
• Translate business and technical requirements into deployable intelligence solutions, including model selection and routing, context and retrieval, tool use, agent workflows, memory, integration, inference, and deployment patterns.
• Design model-agnostic interfaces, reusable contracts, and abstraction layers that allow platforms and products to adopt stronger intelligence without major redesign or unnecessary vendor lock-in.
• Define qualification and evaluation systems that measure grounded correctness, domain performance, reliability, safety, latency, throughput, cost, compute efficiency, reproducibility, and business outcomes.
• Create reusable patterns for fine‑tuning, LoRA and adapters, distillation, synthetic data, prompt and context engineering, caching, quantization, inference optimization, and open-weight deployment.
• Architect closed-loop learning systems that capture outcomes, failures, feedback, evidence, and operational signals to improve models, software, hardware requirements, and workflows over time.
• Embed governance by design through identity and scope, authority boundaries, evidence and provenance, auditability, human oversight, secure data handling, and reversible machine actions.
• Connect intelligence with enterprise knowledge, software tools, APIs, simulation, optimization, digital twins, and domain workflows through secure, typed, machine-consumable services.
• Lead practical experiments, lighthouse programs, architecture reviews, and production transitions; convert successful work into reference architectures, evaluation assets, and reusable engineering patterns.
• Partner with software, controls, product, data, security, legal, infrastructure, and domain teams to integrate appropriate intelligence into enterprise processes and Lam products.
• Maintain state‑of‑the‑art awareness through industry, vendor, open-source, startup, and university engagement; translate relevant advances into recommendations, benchmarks, experiments, and technical decisions.
• Mentor architects and engineers, strengthen applied AI practices across Lam, and communicate complex model and architecture trade‑offs to technical and executive audiences.

Who We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree with 12+ years of relevant experience; or master’s degree with 8+ years; or PhD with 5+ years; or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong communication, technical leadership, and cross‑functional collaboration skills, including the ability to influence senior technical and business stakeholders.
• Substantial experience in applied AI or machine learning systems, AI architecture, applied research, distributed systems, cloud or platform engineering, or advanced software and product engineering.
• Demonstrated success designing and deploying production AI systems using foundation models, multimodal models, retrieval, tools, agents, or other learning‑driven capabilities.
• Deep understanding of the model lifecycle, including evaluation, selection, post‑training, fine‑tuning, inference, observability, safety, cost, and continuous improvement.
• Strong hands‑on technical capability with Python and modern AI or machine learning frameworks, plus the ability to assess implementation quality and guide engineering teams.
• Experience creating scalable architectures across APIs, services, event‑driven systems, data platforms, containers, cloud infrastructure, and secure enterprise integration patterns.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business and engineering problems into measurable evaluations, technical decisions, reference patterns, and production roadmaps.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience deploying and optimizing open‑weight models, including LoRA or adapter tuning, quantization, distillation, model serving, GPU utilization, and inference optimization.
• Experience with multi‑model routing, automated evaluation, agentic systems, reinforcement learning, long‑horizon optimization, or self‑improving engineering workflows.
• Experience connecting AI with physics engines, optimization, simulation, digital twins, controls, scientific or engineering tools, or hardware‑software development workflows.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI and data platforms such as Azure AI Foundry, Kubernetes, MLflow or comparable observability platforms, knowledge graphs, ontology platforms, and Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience applying responsible AI, secure software development, model governance, intellectual‑property protection, and data controls in a large global or highly regulated enterprise.
• Semiconductor, industrial equipment, scientific computing, manufacturing, or complex cyber‑physical product experience is a plus.
• Experience collaborating with universities, research organizations, open‑source communities, startups, and strategic technology partners is a plus.

Our commitment

We believe it is important for every person to feel valued, included, and empowered to achieve their full potential. By bringing unique individuals and viewpoints together, we achieve extraordinary results.

Lam Research ("Lam" or the "Company") is an equal opportunity employer. Lam is committed to and reaffirms support of equal opportunity in employment and non‑discrimination in employment policies, practices and procedures on the basis of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions), gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, or military and veteran status or any other category protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws. It is the Company's intention to comply with all applicable laws and regulations. Company policy prohibits unlawful discrimination against applicants or employees.

Work location models

Lam offers a variety of work location models based on the needs of each role. Our hybrid roles combine the benefits of on‑site collaboration with colleagues and the flexibility to work remotely and fall into two categories – On-site Flex and Virtual Flex. ‘On-site Flex’ you’ll work 3+ days per week on‑site at a Lam or customer/supplier location, with the opportunity to work remotely for the balance of the week. ‘Virtual Flex’ you’ll work 1-2 days per week on‑site at a Lam or customer/supplier location, and remotely the rest of the time.

Salary

CA San Francisco Bay Area Salary Range for this position: $166,000.00 - $350,000.00.

The above salary range for this position is relevant to applicants that reside or work onsite in the California, San Francisco Bay Area only. Salary offers will depend on factors that include the location you work from, your level, education, training, specific skills, years of experience and comparison to other employees already in this role. Actual salary may vary from salary offered due to numerous factors including but not limited to unpaid time off, unpaid leave, company mandated shutdown, and other relevant factors.

Our Perks And Benefits

At Lam, our people make amazing things possible. That’s why we invest in you throughout the phases of your life with a comprehensive set of outstanding benefits.