AI Architect | Digital Products & AI

PA Consulting•Charlotte, NC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The AI Architect will work directly with clients to shape, design, and lead delivery of production digital products, AI agents, intelligent workflows, and modernized platforms. Working with Product Strategists and AI Engineers, the architect owns delivery architecture for complex engagements, translates business problems into executable solutions, and keeps implementation aligned with the design. The role may also contribute to shaping opportunities before delivery and, on some engagements, remain involved in operating solutions after launch. This is a hands-on architecture and engineering role. The architect defines the architecture, controls, and acceptance criteria that help determine whether solutions succeed in production, while making technical decisions, navigating ambiguity, and moving delivery forward. The role also involves defining technical components for agentic systems, modernizing platforms around current business needs, and designing security and operational resilience into solutions. The position is part of the Digital Products & AI team. PA operates globally, with more than 4,000 strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists. The company works across consumer and manufacturing, defense and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government and public services, health and life sciences, and transport.

Requirements

Track record designing, building, and delivering complex technology solutions in production environments.
Experience leading architecture and technical delivery for complex software, cloud, or digital transformation initiatives while continuing to build and operate production software.
Strong software engineering skills; Python and TypeScript are ideal.
Experience designing and delivering cloud-native systems on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Hands-on experience building AI applications and agent-based systems in production.
Experience with orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, or similar, and judgment about when an orchestration layer is appropriate.
Experience building retrieval-enabled systems and working with technologies such as pgvector, Elasticsearch, or OpenSearch; understanding of trade-offs among retrieval quality, latency, and cost.
Experience integrating applications with enterprise systems, data platforms, APIs, identity providers, and MCP-enabled services.
Experience owning solution architecture for complex technology initiatives, including decomposition, sequencing, and technical decision-making across delivery teams.
Strong technical judgment and communication skills, with the ability to navigate ambiguity and work directly with clients and multidisciplinary teams while balancing delivery speed, quality, security, and maintainability.
Experience working directly with senior technology stakeholders and credibility discussing solution approaches with engineering leaders and client CTOs.

Nice To Haves

Experience delivering solutions in consulting or professional services, or experience as a technical founder.
Experience in healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, energy and utilities, transportation, or consumer industries.
Experience building reusable platforms, tooling, or AI solutions in regulated environments.

Responsibilities

Own delivery architecture for digital products, AI agents, intelligent workflows, and modernization initiatives from discovery through deployment.
Architect production AI capabilities, including tool selection, memory and context management, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop controls.
Define, build, and guide implementation of technical components for agentic systems, including retrieval pipelines, MCP services and integrations, and connections between AI capabilities and enterprise data and processes.
Modernize platforms and applications around current business needs, rebuilding where necessary rather than merely moving legacy functionality to newer technology.
Design security and operational resilience into solutions, including access controls, identity management, deployment guardrails, and oversight of automated actions.
Break complex problems into deliverable components; define scope, sequencing, implementation approaches, and delivery plans; and assess feasibility and technical risk.
Create reusable patterns, approaches, and tooling to strengthen future engagements and potentially develop capabilities and products for market.
Work directly with clients and senior technology stakeholders to shape solutions, make technical decisions, and maintain alignment between design and delivery.