Data & AI Architect

K.L. Scott & Associates•Washington, DC

About The Position

K.L. Scott & Associates (KLSA) is a mission-driven management and technology consulting firm that partners with public-sector organizations to modernize operations, strengthen data and AI capabilities, and deliver measurable impact. KLSA combines strategic advisory services with hands-on delivery; bringing product leadership, secure data engineering, systems integration, and user-centered design to help clients translate complex requirements into scalable, high-quality solutions. KL Scott and Associates is seeking a Data & AI Architect. This role serves as the technical authority for enterprise data, analytics, and AI architecture supporting the chatbot platform. The position combines strategic data architecture leadership with hands-on oversight of data engineering, AI enablement, governance, and evaluation frameworks to ensure secure, scalable, and auditable AI operations. The ideal candidate will reside in or within commutable distance to Washington DC.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Engineering, or related field.
20+ years of experience in data architecture, analytics, or platform engineering; 3+ years applying AI/ML to production use cases (NLP/LLM/retrieval-augmented generation preferred).
Deep experience with enterprise data platforms, cloud environments, and AI/ML systems.
Prior leadership in regulated or security-conscious environments.
Ability to obtain and maintain Top Secret clearance eligibility.

Nice To Haves

Master’s or PhD in a quantitative discipline.
Cloud Data Specialty (AWS/Azure/GCP), TOGAF (architecture), DAMA/CDMP (data management), Security+ (helpful in regulated environments, preferred), Databricks (or equivalent platform).

Responsibilities

Implement data quality checks, validation rules, versioning, lineage, and access controls aligned to governance requirements.
Create and maintain curated datasets and searchable knowledge artifacts to support retrieval and response grounding.
Optimize indexing and retrieval pipelines to improve response relevance, latency, and overall user experience.
Support release cycles by ensuring data refresh procedures, rollback plans, and operational monitoring are in place.
Build secure ingestion and processing pipelines for documents, guidance, SOPs, and approved structured data sources.
Implement data quality checks, validation rules, versioning, lineage, and access controls aligned to governance requirements.
Create and maintain curated datasets and searchable knowledge artifacts to support retrieval and response grounding.
Optimize indexing and retrieval pipelines to improve response relevance, latency, and overall user experience.
Support release cycles by ensuring data refresh procedures, rollback plans, and operational monitoring are in place.
Develop data architecture and AI product architecture in alignment with Federal and agency security requirements.
Support the harvesting and refinement of solutions for internal KLSA product portfolio.
Ability to operate with minimal management oversight and maintain compliance in alignment to project requirements.
Ability to engage with, collaborate, and present to executive stakeholders (CFO), technical leaders (CDO), and mission leaders (Division Directors).
Maintain professional execution of project delivery while engaging with executive presence as all times.