Principal Architect - AI Product Engineering

Role Description

As an AI Product Engineering Principal Architect, you are the senior technical leader responsible for driving the design, delivery, and execution of complex, enterprise-grade AI solutions. You will lead teams of architects and engineers in building advanced AI systems—spanning generative AI, intelligent agents, data platforms, and cloud-native applications—while shaping the broader direction of 3Cloud’s AI Product Engineering practice.

You combine deep, hands-on technical expertise with strong leadership skills, enabling you to mentor technical teams, remove architectural barriers, and ensure successful delivery of highly complex AI programs. You are a trusted advisor to C-level stakeholders and a driver of innovation, ensuring that 3Cloud delivers scalable, secure, and high-impact AI solutions across industries.

Responsibilities

• Technical Strategy & Solution Delivery
  • Lead cross-functional engineering and architecture teams in the end-to-end delivery of complex AI systems, ensuring technical excellence and delivery quality.
  • Define and enforce reference architectures, technical patterns, delivery standards, and accelerators for enterprise AI adoption (leveraging Azure capabilities where appropriate).
  • Provide senior-level architectural oversight on programs, guiding the design of advanced, distributed, AI-powered applications across multi-system enterprise environments.
  • Drive the integration of modern AI capabilities—such as generative AI, intelligent/agentic systems, and Model Context Protocol (MCP)—into production-ready software.
  • Champion best practices for performance, scalability, reliability, observability, and MLOps/LLMOps across all AI delivery engagements.
• Client Engagement & Technical Leadership
  • Serve as a trusted technical advisor to executive stakeholders (CIO, CTO, CDO), helping them define enterprise AI strategies and prioritize high-value opportunities.
  • Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, and visioning sessions to align solution direction with business outcomes.
  • Represent 3Cloud’s technical leadership in client engagements, partner discussions, and industry events, effectively communicating complex AI and engineering concepts.
• Program Leadership & Delivery Management
  • Oversee a portfolio of large-scale AI delivery programs, ensuring architectural integrity, risk mitigation, and alignment with client strategy.
  • Provide proactive technical guidance to remove delivery blockers, solve architectural challenges, and ensure teams are building scalable and secure solutions.
  • Shape the technical direction of sales pursuits, proposals, and multi-year roadmap engagements through expert-level architectural insight.
• Practice Leadership & Mentorship
  • Mentor senior architects, tech leads, and engineers, raising the overall technical bar of the practice.
  • Define and expand internal frameworks, reusable components, delivery IP, and reference architectures to improve quality and speed across AI engagements.
  • Contribute to thought leadership through whitepapers, conference speaking, open-source contributions, and community involvement.
  • Intentionally evangelize AI Product Engineering capabilities and opportunities across the company and projects to promote awareness and consideration in cross-practice opportunities and proposals.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 12+ years in software engineering or application development, with 5+ years in architecture leadership roles delivering enterprise-scale systems.
• Proven experience leading teams in delivering complex, cloud-native, AI-driven applications from concept to production.

Requirements

• Extensive experience guiding large-scale modernization or AI adoption programs across multiple business units.
• Demonstrated ability to build and execute technical strategies that align with enterprise business goals.
• Deep expertise across several of the following areas:
• Agentic AI & Orchestration : Designing intelligent agent workflows using frameworks such as Semantic Kernel or LangChain; implementing tool/function calling with planning and orchestration patterns.
• Search & Retrieval : Architecting solutions using vector databases, hybrid search, and RAG optimization techniques.
• LLM Evaluation, Quality & Operations : Building evaluation pipelines, golden datasets, quality gates, telemetry, feedback loops, and guardrails to support reliable LLM deployment.
• Responsible AI, Security & Compliance : Applying AI governance, safety, risk mitigation, and privacy controls across enterprise AI solutions.
• AI Platforms & Data Foundations : Hands-on experience with Azure AI, Azure OpenAI, Databricks, ML/data pipelines, event-driven architectures, and scalable data systems.
• Cloud Engineering : Expertise in API-driven, microservices-based, and containerized architectures on Azure. Deep familiarity with DevOps, CI/CD, IaC, and Microsoft development ecosystems (C#, .NET, Azure Functions, etc.).
• Data Integration & Governance : Experience building robust ETL/ELT systems with strong data quality and metadata governance practices.
• Analytics & Visualization : Ability to integrate analytics and ML outputs into enterprise applications and BI environments.
• Innovation & Adaptability : Continuously explores emerging AI technologies and can rapidly convert them into enterprise-ready, technically sound solutions.
• Tools & Methodologies : Strong proficiency with modern development workflows, DevOps practices, GitHub, and AI-assisted coding tools. Comfortable working in Agile environments and driving iterative delivery.
• Strategic Vision & Business Acumen : Ability to align technical architecture with business outcomes; capable of influencing and shaping long-term strategies.
• Thought Leadership & IP Development : Recognized for contributing to the AI ecosystem (articles, talks, OSS, frameworks, accelerators). Experience building reusable IP adopted across teams or practices.

Benefits

• Flexible work location with a virtual first approach to work!
• 401(K) with match up to 50% of your 6% contributions of eligible pay.
• Generous PTO providing a minimum of 15 days in addition to 9 paid company holidays and 2 floating personal days.
• Two medical plan options to allow you the choice to elect what works best for you!
• Option for vision and dental coverage.
• 100% employer paid coverage for life and disability insurance.
• Paid leave for birth parents and non-birth parents.
• Option for Healthcare FSA, HSA, and Dependent Care FSA.
• $67.00 monthly tech and home office allowance.
• Utilization and/or discretionary bonus eligibility based on role.
• Employee Assistance Program to help with everyday challenges.