Knowledge Architect

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman • Nashville, DC

1d

About The Position

The Knowledge Architect is responsible for the technical architecture, engineering, and ongoing operation of Pillsbury’s legal knowledge layer, including the Enterprise Knowledge Platform and its supporting tools and integrations. The role connects document repositories, matter profiles, and legal expertise databases to enterprise search and approved AI workflows, making legal work product discoverable, organized, current, and accessible within users’ permissions.

Working closely with Knowledge & Innovation, the architect combines hands-on platform configuration with development of integrations, document-processing pipelines, and reusable retrieval services. The role determines when to use native platform capabilities and when to build extensions, and is accountable for technical design, testing, and reliable operation across work delivered with IT, AI engineers, and vendors. The Enterprise Knowledge Platform provides the search and knowledge access layer; iManage and other source systems remain authoritative, while governed indexes, extracted information, and retrieval services make their content reusable across the firm.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, Analytics, or a related field.
• At least five years of relevant professional experience in enterprise technology, knowledge management systems, or related technical environments.
• Demonstrated experience implementing, managing, and optimizing enterprise search, knowledge management, or document management platforms, including troubleshooting, system maintenance, and continuous improvement.
• Proficiency developing, integrating, and maintaining technical solutions using APIs, scripting, or programming languages, including testing, troubleshooting, and ongoing support.
• Strong understanding of document ingestion, metadata management, indexing, and information retrieval processes for enterprise search and related applications.
• Experience implementing and maintaining security protocols and access controls to protect sensitive enterprise information and align with established permissions and security requirements.
• Strong analytical, communication, and project management skills, including the ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions, evaluate design considerations, and collaborate with stakeholders, technical teams, and external vendors.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated technical ownership of a production enterprise search, knowledge, or document platform, including implementation, troubleshooting, and ongoing improvement.
• Hands-on ability to build and maintain integrations or automation using APIs and a scripting or programming language, and to test, debug, and support delivered solutions.
• Practical understanding of how document ingestion, metadata, and indexing make content usable in search and downstream applications.
• Experience implementing access controls for sensitive enterprise information and working with security and source-system teams to preserve permissions.
• Ability to translate stakeholder needs into technical solutions, explain design tradeoffs, and lead delivery across technical teams, vendors, and professional users.

Responsibilities

• Own the firm-side technical architecture and delivery of the Enterprise Knowledge Platform and associated tools, including platform evaluation, configuration, technical backlog, release validation, and production performance.
• Own the technical relationship with the selected platform provider; diagnose issues, review vendor designs, manage escalations, and validate capabilities against firm requirements and contracted scope.
• Maintain architecture diagrams, version-controlled code and configuration, operating procedures, and monitoring; diagnose platform and integration failures and coordinate recovery, capacity planning, and legacy search transition with IT and the vendor.
• Design, build, test, and maintain knowledge-platform integrations with iManage and approved repositories, working with IT source-system owners; configure supported connectors and develop integration code, extensions, or automation as needed.
• Establish reliable processing for Word documents, PDFs, scanned content, and other approved formats; validate text extraction, OCR, tables, document structure, and processing exceptions.
• Define incremental ingestion, change detection, retry, and reconciliation processes; track document identities and versions, and propagate deletions and access changes into indexes and derived content.
• Serve as a primary liaison between Knowledge Management & Innovation and assigned business units by participating in practice meetings, building attorney relationships, and supporting strategic practice initiatives.
• Collaborate with practice leadership to identify and prioritize knowledge management, process improvement, and innovation opportunities, and develop actionable roadmaps aligned with business objectives.
• Support adoption of new tools, workflows, and knowledge resources by delivering training, developing user-friendly enablement materials, and gathering stakeholder feedback for continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with Knowledge Lawyers, Innovation Managers, Knowledge Engineers, IT, Legal Operations, Practice Management, Marketing & Business Development, and Learning & Development to implement integrated solutions across the firm.

Benefits

• Equal opportunity employer; qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered in accordance with the California Fair Chance Act.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior