Principal AI Architect

TEKsystems•Dallas, TX

1d•$190,600 - $286,000•Remote

About The Position

The Principal AI Architect is a senior leadership role within TEKsystems Global Services’ AI Shared Services team. The position shapes technical strategy, leads complex customer engagements, and serves as a top-level technical authority for clients, sellers, partners, and internal delivery teams. The role architects and governs enterprise AI adoption and custom agentic solution programs, primarily using Anthropic technologies, with a focus on measurable business outcomes. It may require up to 25% travel. This is a hands-on architecture role that spans executive strategy, detailed technical design, prototyping, and technical contribution. The architect moves between strategic initiatives, joins solution calls, leads customer engagement architecture, and mentors other architects. The position calls for deep enterprise solution experience on a major platform such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or Salesforce, applied to production AI. Anthropic is the primary focus, while the role also extends to OpenAI and other technology partners as the ecosystem grows. The Principal AI Architect defines end-to-end architecture for complex AI programs, leads AI discovery and customer engagement, guides enterprise Claude rollouts, and designs custom agents and applications through production and ongoing optimization. The role coordinates architects and technical leads, establishes measures of technical and business success, and works with partners and internal platform teams. It also helps develop the AI Shared Services team’s offerings, accelerators, reference architectures, and standards, while supporting pre-sales and pursuit activities. AI solutions must incorporate identity and least-privilege access, sensitive-data protection, human-in-the-loop controls, limits on agent authority, auditability, and safeguards against prompt injection and other adversarial risks. The role also addresses privacy, compliance, cost management, model and agent evaluation, monitoring, and release acceptance criteria. This is a permanent, fully remote position based out of Dallas, Texas. The listed annual pay range is $190,600–$286,000. Individual compensation depends on qualifications, skills, experience, job knowledge, location, internal equity, and other job-related factors. Additional earnings may be available through incentive programs such as annual bonuses or profit sharing.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
10+ years of experience in enterprise technology, software engineering, cloud, architecture, or professional services, including 5+ years leading architecture for complex enterprise solutions.
Deep hands-on experience with at least one major cloud or enterprise platform such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or Salesforce, including design and delivery for enterprise clients.
2+ years of hands-on experience designing and delivering production generative AI, LLM, and agentic solutions, with demonstrated experience using Claude and/or comparable frontier models.
Experience architecting and deploying solutions using Claude API, Claude Code, Claude for Enterprise, and Anthropic agent development tooling, together with agent integration standards and patterns such as MCP.
Experience deploying AI solutions through cloud AI platforms such as Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Microsoft Azure.
Strong technical competency in agent and multi-agent orchestration, tool/function calling, memory and state management, RAG, vector and hybrid retrieval, prompt and context engineering, model and agent evaluation, observability, and production AI operations.
Experience integrating AI and agentic solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, data platforms, identity systems, and business workflows, with a strong understanding of security, governance, reliability, and cost optimization.
Hands-on experience with Python and one or more additional programming or scripting languages, along with CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
Demonstrated success leading large, complex programs across multiple teams, including leading architecture review boards and making sound decisions in ambiguous or high-pressure environments.
Strong executive communication skills and the ability to explain architecture and AI strategy to technical and non-technical audiences.
Ability to travel up to 25% to client locations and work effectively across distributed teams and time zones.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
15+ years of experience in information technology and/or professional services, with a strong record of enterprise transformation leadership.
Experience with OpenAI technologies, including ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI API, Codex, and OpenAI Agents SDK.
Demonstrated judgment across multiple model families, including guiding model selection and portability decisions for clients.
Experience building or scaling teams, delivery capabilities, or strategic offerings, and managing technology partner relationships.
Strong command of DevOps, MLOps or LLMOps, and platform engineering principles, including release engineering and policy-driven automation.
Track record of mentoring senior architects and influencing executive stakeholders in highly consultative, client-facing roles.
Relevant cloud or AI certifications are preferred but not required, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud architecture and AI credentials. Equivalent hands-on experience designing and delivering production AI solutions will be considered.

Responsibilities

Define end-to-end architecture for large AI programs, including enterprise rollout, custom agent and application development, integration, security, governance, observability, and operations.
Establish target-state architecture, guardrails, and decision frameworks aligned with business priorities, engineering constraints, and delivery execution.
Serve as the escalation point for complex architecture, integration, performance, and governance challenges.
Lead AI discovery and readiness assessments to identify, qualify, and prioritize use cases based on business value, feasibility, risk, and readiness.
Lead architecture workshops, prototypes, proofs of concept, and technical evaluations, setting success criteria and paths from experimentation to production.
Join solution calls and lead architecture on customer engagements as priorities and customer needs change.
Build trusted relationships with senior client stakeholders and present architecture options, tradeoffs, roadmaps, and AI strategy to technical and non-technical audiences.
Connect technical possibilities to business priorities to help shape follow-on work.
Guide enterprise Claude rollouts, including adoption strategy, security and access design, integration, and measurable usage outcomes.
Lead the design and build of custom agents, applications, and solutions using Anthropic APIs and SDKs, from roadmap through production release, optimization, and ongoing evolution.
Coordinate architects and technical leads on engagements to ensure technical quality, risk management, and alignment with client outcomes.
Define technical and business success criteria and use evaluation, observability, reliability, and adoption signals to guide optimization.
Manage the working relationship with Anthropic, including engagement with its solution and field teams, technical escalations, sharing customer and field insights, and staying current on product roadmaps.
Extend partner collaboration practices to OpenAI and future technology partners.
Collaborate with AWS, Azure, GCP, and Salesforce teams when customers access Anthropic models through those platforms.
Review existing customer solutions on other platforms, such as Claude through Amazon Bedrock, and advise on model and agent architecture.
Mentor architects, engineers, and technical leads, and elevate architecture quality and engineering practices.
Support recruiting, interviewing, talent development, and succession planning for the team.
Develop AI Shared Services offerings, accelerators, reusable assets, reference architectures, and technical standards that translate emerging capabilities into repeatable use cases.
Contribute thought leadership through workshops, enablement, and client-facing materials, and stay current on model releases, agentic patterns, and the AI partner ecosystem.
Design AI solutions with identity, least-privilege access, sensitive-data protection, human-in-the-loop controls, limits on agent authority, and auditability.
Address prompt injection and other adversarial risks, privacy and compliance, cost management, model and agent evaluation, monitoring, and release acceptance criteria.
Support pre-sales and pursuit activities, including solution strategy, estimates, risk reviews, staffing assumptions, and executive-level client conversations.
Partner with Solution Architects, Solution Executives, and delivery leaders to shape commercially sound and technically credible solutions.

Benefits

Medical insurance
Dental insurance
Vision insurance
Critical illness, accident, and hospital coverage
401(k) retirement plan, with pre-tax and Roth post-tax contributions available
Voluntary life and AD&D insurance for employees and dependents
Short- and long-term disability
Health Spending Account (HSA)
Transportation benefits
Employee Assistance Program
Paid time off, vacation, or sick leave
Additional earnings may be available through incentive programs such as annual bonuses or profit sharing