Principal Architect

Zafin•Toronto, ON

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Architect is a senior technical leadership role responsible for defining and maintaining the architectural standards, integration patterns, and technical governance for AI Operating System (AIOS), the AI-native platform, across all client engagements. Your primary goal is to ensure that all squad-level architecture decisions align with enterprise standards, that the platform remains scalable and maintainable at scale, and that reusable capabilities are properly designed and shared across the organization. This position serves as the leading technical authority across the client AI transformations, providing architectural leadership to engagements. It establishes long-term technical direction, influences enterprise technology decisions, and ensures AIOS implementations remain scalable, secure, and aligned with both client enterprise architecture and Zafin’s. This means the position will be responsible for defining platform-wide architectural standards for agent design, orchestration, retrieval, memory, prompt engineering, evaluation, observability, integration, security, and responsible AI implementation; reviewing and approving complex architectural decisions from squad architects; and leading the evolution of our reusable architecture library. You work horizontally across all squads without direct reporting authority, serving as the escalation point for architecture decisions platform-wide. As a senior technical architect, this position will mentor junior architects and senior engineers on design approaches, ensure consistency across implementations, and balance the need for platform standardization with the practical realities of individual client engagements. The work directly enables faster delivery, higher quality, and greater reuse across all client-facing teams.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in enterprise technology delivery, including senior leadership or executive client-facing roles.
Experience designing enterprise-scale AI platforms incorporating agentic AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), orchestration frameworks, API ecosystems, and cloud-native architectures.
Experience providing technical leadership across multiple enterprise transformations simultaneously.
Deep expertise in agent orchestration frameworks, integration architecture, API design, and enterprise software architecture patterns
Demonstrated experience defining and scaling reusable technical standards across multiple teams or at an enterprise scale
Strong grounding in security and data governance patterns for AI/ML systems in regulated environments
Ability to influence enterprise architecture decisions at CIO, Chief Architect, and executive technology leadership. This includes technical decisions and drive adoption without direct reporting authority over the engineers implementing the standards.
Experience establishing reference architectures, technical standards, and governance models adopted across multiple delivery organizations.
Excellent communicator who can translate architecture standards and technical concepts into practical guidance for engineers at different levels

Nice To Haves

Prior experience as a Principal Architect, Chief Architect, at a software/SaaS or AI company
Experience with Azure AI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Open AI, Anthropic or comparable enterprise AI ecosystems.
Track record of building reusable component libraries or platforms that drove measurable adoption and reduced duplicate engineering effort
Experience with enterprise architecture governance frameworks
Background in financial services technology or regulated industries
Experience designing and implementing observability, monitoring, and governance systems for AI/ML platforms
Published papers, speaking engagements, or open-source contributions demonstrating thought leadership in architecture

Responsibilities

Define target-state enterprise architecture for complex AIOS transformations, ensuring alignment between client business strategy, technology landscape, and AI operating model.
Define and maintain platform-wide architecture standards for agent design, orchestration, integration patterns, and API design
Review and approve squad-level architecture decisions for alignment with enterprise standards and best practices
Lead the development, governance, and adoption of reusable reference architectures, implementation patterns, and technical capabilities across client engagements.
Partner with Agent Architects and Senior Agent Engineers across client-facing squads to align on design standards and drive adoption of platform patterns
Serve as the senior technical advisor to CIOS, Chief Architects, and enterprise technology leaders during client engagements including conducting complex architecture reviews and novel implementations; translate technical standards into client context, and more.
Identify architectural patterns emerging in client engagements and translate into reusable reference architectures, and implementation guidance where applicable
Develop and maintain security and data governance patterns for AI systems; ensure compliance with regulatory and risk requirements
Mentor and coach junior architects and senior engineers on architecture approaches, design trade-offs, and platform standards
Identify and address architecture technical debt; propose recommendations that improve scalability, maintainability, and reusability
Serve as escalation point for architecture decisions that span multiple squads or have platform-wide implications
Communicate architecture vision, standards, and decisions to executive and technical stakeholders quarterly or as needed