AI-Native Architect

Carnegie Mellon University•Pittsburgh, PA

11h•Onsite

About The Position

The AI-Native Architect helps organizations address architecture-scale challenges with AI. Work may include modernizing legacy systems, rearchitecting systems to support new technologies, creating architectures and reference architectures across domains, and creating or evolving agentic workflows for business processes and software engineering activities. The role advances the AI-Native Software Engineering strategy by assessing customer challenges, recommending solutions, designing modernization strategies, coaching teams through architecture-scale change, and architecting and prototyping systems and agentic workflows. The architect also identifies opportunities to apply AI to architecture challenges and shares experience and practice improvements through publications and presentations. The position offers the opportunity to work with software engineers, researchers, and data scientists on national- and global-scale problems. The AI-Native Software Engineering Directorate studies and guides industry and government use of AI in software engineering, distills lessons and best practices, supports pilots and transitions, measures improvements, creates agents and agentic workflows, and helps organizations establish AI-native practices. Its goal is to enable AI-paced software delivery without sacrificing quality.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related discipline and eight years of experience; or a master’s degree in the same fields and five years of experience; or a Ph.D. and two years of experience.
Comprehensive knowledge of software architecture and software engineering fundamentals.
Broad knowledge of architecture principles, practices, and tools.
Ability to quickly learn new problem domains and technologies.
Track record of architecting or rearchitecting systems at scale.
Track record of aligning development activities with planned architectures.
Ability to keep up with and adapt to rapidly changing technical advances.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including explaining complex technical ideas in layperson’s terms to stakeholders with different backgrounds.
Proficiency developing task plans or roadmaps to solve complex problems.
Strong collaboration skills for working with colleagues and sponsors.
Willingness and ability to guide and mentor junior team members.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a Department of War security clearance, subject to a background investigation.
Willingness to travel up to 25% of the time, including to SEI offices in Washington, D.C., sponsor sites, and conferences.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading engineering teams to produce successful outcomes for industry or government projects.
Successful application of AI to improve software engineering activities.
Experience working with leadership to plan, develop, and deliver an overall technical strategy.
Experience drafting work proposals.

Responsibilities

Assess customer system challenges and recommend technical solutions.
Review existing systems against current challenges and design modernization strategies.
Create novel architectures and reference architectures to address customer challenges.
Coach engineering teams in achieving architecture-scale changes.
Architect and prototype systems and agentic workflows.
Identify opportunities to apply AI to diverse architecture challenges.
Share experiences, solutions, and practice improvements with the technical community through publications and presentations.
Help organizations modernize and evolve software using architecture and AI-native approaches.
Contribute to AI-native software engineering pilots and transitions, and measure their success.