Lead Deployment Architect - AI

Celonis • Redwood City, CA

10h • Hybrid

About The Position

Celonis is hiring a Lead Deployment Architect for its Advanced AI Practice. The role is the senior technical authority within delivery and owns end-to-end solution architecture across a portfolio of strategic customer engagements, from data foundations and process intelligence through operational applications, automation, security, governance, and production operations. The architect defines delivery standards, remains hands-on in solution design and implementation, and ensures solutions are scalable, maintainable, and tied to measurable customer outcomes.

The role leads complex enterprise deployments and works across pre-sales and post-sales: scoping and estimating Services, validating feasibility, setting technical direction, resolving escalations, and ensuring proposed solutions can be delivered and scaled. It also serves as a senior technical advisor to customer executives and technology leaders, translating business challenges into platform strategies, use cases, success metrics, and value cases.

As part of both the Deployment Architect Practice and a global community of Advanced AI specialists, the role determines when solutions should use fixed business rules, AI reasoning, predictive or statistical models, or optimization. It designs and delivers production AI systems with appropriate evaluation, guardrails, and monitoring. The architect mentors colleagues, contributes to hiring and practice standards, develops reusable solution patterns, and shares production lessons with Product & Engineering. Customer travel is required as needed by project delivery phases.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of experience in technical consulting, forward deployed engineering, solution or enterprise architecture, or delivery leadership in enterprise software, consulting, or systems integration.
• At least 3 years in a senior or lead technical role with multi-stakeholder responsibility on large-scale enterprise projects.
• Proven ability to design and deliver complex end-to-end enterprise solutions spanning data integration, process intelligence, operational applications, and automation.
• Deep understanding of enterprise architecture patterns, security, governance, and architectural trade-offs.
• Deep, demonstrable knowledge of SQL, Python, Bash or shell scripting, and REST or SOAP APIs.
• Familiarity with another general-purpose programming language such as Golang, JavaScript or TypeScript, Java, or equivalent.
• Expert-level Celonis platform knowledge, including the Process Intelligence Graph, data modeling, advanced PQL, Python scripting, and the automation and orchestration engine.
• Ability to design solutions combining fixed business rules, AI reasoning such as large language models, predictive and statistical models, and optimization, and explain the rationale for each approach.
• Experience directing AI-assisted and agentic development tools as part of day-to-day delivery.
• Experience taking machine-learning or statistical models into production for customers or business users, or designing and delivering an end-to-end agentic system that takes actions autonomously, including selecting the approach, defining evaluation measures, and implementing guardrails and monitoring.
• Track record of building trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, presenting transformation strategies, defending architectural decisions, and navigating complex IT landscapes and organizational dynamics.
• Experience owning technical delivery and escalations end to end, scoping and estimating pre-sales effort, and leading workshops, design sessions, and strategic reviews with senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor technical staff, set quality standards, and strengthen organizational capability.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, Technology Management, Business Informatics, or a comparable field.
• Willingness to travel to customer locations as required by project delivery phases.

Nice To Haves

• A degree in machine learning, statistics, data science, or a related quantitative field.
• Formal people-management experience.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end platform architecture for complex enterprise deployments across process areas, business units, systems, and geographies.
• Design secure, scalable, maintainable technical architectures that integrate the Celonis platform with customer systems and data strategies.
• Make and defend architectural trade-offs, including build versus configure, custom versus standard, and phased versus big-bang approaches.
• Conduct design and code reviews and ensure delivery teams meet architectural and production-readiness standards.
• Lead technical delivery on complex engagements, set direction, remove dependencies, and resolve escalations involving scope, timelines, and customer expectations.
• Scope Services, estimate effort, and validate solution feasibility during pre-sales; ensure proposed work can be delivered and scaled in production.
• Implement early-stage Celonis products for customers and maintain feedback cycles with Product & Engineering.
• Define long-term operating models, including monitoring, access and security controls, change management, and quality practices as solutions scale.
• Advise strategic customers and senior executives; translate business challenges into platform strategies, high-impact use cases, success metrics, and outcome-based value cases.
• Guide customers on Process Intelligence maturity, platform expansion, IT change management, data security, AI readiness, and organizational change.
• Build domain or industry expertise and translate it into reusable solution patterns, reference architectures, and best practices; collaborate with Product and Business Apps teams on the platform roadmap.
• Mentor Deployment Engineers and Deployment Architects on AI solution design, model evaluation, and production guardrails through reviews.
• Contribute to hiring by defining role expectations, interviewing candidates, and calibrating assessments for Advanced AI roles.
• Develop reusable AI templates, host practice office hours, help address known AI delivery gaps, and share production insights with Product & Engineering.
• Travel to customer locations as required by project delivery phases.

Benefits

• Health, dental, and life benefits, 401(k), and paid time off.
• Restricted Stock Units for full-time employees and merit-based refresh grants.
• Paid parental leave: 24 weeks for primary carers and 12 weeks for supporting carers, available from the first day of employment.
• Unlimited PTO in applicable regions and generous PTO globally.
• Flexible hybrid work model.
• Learning framework, mentorship programs, and access to a dedicated learning platform.
• Subsidized Wellhub memberships, mental health counseling, and Wellness Weeks.
• Paid time off for annual Impact Days to volunteer for community and environmental causes.
• Inclusion Think Tank and annual Inclusion Days.

What This Job Offers

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