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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Director, Architecture and AI to lead enterprise-wide architectural transformation - **Company:** Innovation Associates, Inc. - **Location:** United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $212,500.0 - $287,500.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** .NET Framework, Artificial Intelligence, Automation of Tests, Cloud Computing, Code Generation, Software Quality, Code Review, Distributed Computing Environment, Software Architecture, Software Safety, Service-Oriented Architecture, Service Design, Large Language Models, Vba Programming Language, Production Code, Operational Systems, Data Management, Virtual Agents - **Published:** July 27, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.dice.com/job-detail/404f686c-09ba-4929-9dcf-eb9f796dcd78 ## About the Role * 15+ years in software architecture and engineering leadership, including direct, hands-on ownership of large-scale system modernization. * Demonstrated success leading the modernization of legacy monolithic applications, including .NET, VB6, or comparable legacy stacks, into scalable, modern services architectures. * Deep, working knowledge of LLMs and agentic AI systems, including how they are architected, deployed, evaluated, secured, and scaled in production environments. * Leadership of production AI agent initiatives, including agentic developer and QA tooling such as code generation, automated test generation, code review, or migration agents. * Background owning or architecting cloud-based enterprise analytics, insights, or data platforms at company-wide scale * Experience applying Land, Adopt, Expand, and Retention (LAER) or comparable customer-lifecycle metrics to connect data, AI, and product strategy with customer adoption, expansion, retention, and business growth. * Proven ability to lead, develop, and align mid-sized engineering and architecture teams across multiple product or functional areas. * Proven ability to lead across software and hardware/physical systems, including shared architecture decisions and technical trade-offs. * Experience in a growth-equity environment where technical decisions are explicitly tied to value creation and exit outcomes. * Track record of making complex technical and business trade-offs and communicating decisions clearly to engineering and executive audiences. Even better if you have: * Experience with platforms similar in nature to NEXiA - high-throughput operational systems with distributed processing units and service scaling demands. * Background bridging enterprise IT and R&D, having driven transformation across an organization rather than within a single function. * Familiarity with regulatory or compliance-heavy environments where AI safety and governance carry real operational stakes. * Direct experience building internal developer-productivity or QA platforms and measuring their adoption and impact. Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S. Employer will not sponsor applicants for work visas. ## Description iA is looking for a Sr. Director, Architecture and AI to lead enterprise-wide architectural transformation across the organization. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who has modernized legacy monolithic systems, brings an AI-first mindset, and can translate technical strategy into practical, scalable solutions in a fast-paced growth environment. In this role, you will set architectural direction while staying close to the work - partnering with engineers, reviewing designs, shaping governance, and contributing to reference implementations and prototypes that move the organization forward. You will help decompose iA's long-standing .NET/VB6 monolith into modern, scalable services while introducing AI-native architecture, disciplined AI governance, and production-ready AI capabilities across the company. You will also provide leadership for iA's cloud-based Enterprise Analytics & Insights platform and serve as a key connector between software, data, AI, and hardware teams. Success in this role will be measured by the business and customer outcomes modernization enables - including improved scalability, operational efficiency, product velocity, and long-term growth. What you'll do: Support Monolith Modernization & Services Architecture * Lead the strategy and execution for modernizing the .NET/VB6 monolith into scalable, independently deployable services while balancing business continuity, technical risk, and delivery pace. * Lead the definition of target-state architecture, service boundaries, data ownership, and integration patterns, translating architectural strategy into working reference implementations and prototypes. * Lead strategic trade-off decisions across build vs. buy, rewrite vs. wrap, and speed vs. architectural rigor, clearly connecting recommendations to business impact. AI-First Architecture & Scalable AI Practices * Set the architectural direction for AI-first service design, embedding AI capabilities into core logic, workflows, and decision points rather than treating them as downstream enhancements. * Establish a scalable AI practice for iA, including reusable patterns, shared infrastructure, and reference architectures that accelerate consistent, enterprise-wide AI adoption. * Serve as a member of the Core AI Governance team with responsibility for end-to-end governance of production AI systems, including model risk, data privacy, human-in-the-loop controls, evaluation, monitoring, safety guardrails, and issue response. Agentic Interfaces for Developer & QA Productivity * Lead the architecture, development, and scaling of production-grade AI agents, bringing hands-on expertise in agent orchestration, tool use and permissioning, memory and context management, cost and latency optimization, and failure handling. * Set technical standards for production AI agents, including orchestration, tool use and permissioning, memory and context management, cost and latency optimization, and failure handling at scale. * Establish governance and operational practices for evaluating, monitoring, and safely rolling back agents in production, ensuring productivity gains do not compromise code quality, security, or reliability. * Advance agentic tooling as an enterprise capability, creating reusable patterns that scale developer and QA productivity gains across teams. NEXiA Platform Scaling - PoDs, SSP, MDS * Lead AI-enabled scaling strategies for iA's PoDs, SSP, and MDS within the NEXiA platform, improving throughput, reliability, and operational efficiency as platform usage grows. * Ensure scaling strategies for PoDs, SSP, and MDS are informed by hardware dependencies, physical system constraints, and operational requirements across the NEXiA platform. Customer Lifecycle Metrics - Land, Adopt, Expand, Retain * Use Land, Adopt, Expand, and Retention (LAER) metrics to guide architecture and AI investment decisions, ensuring technical priorities are directly tied to measurable customer adoption, expansion, retention, and business growth. * Land: Accelerate onboarding and initial implementation through AI-enabled workflows that shorten time-to-first-value for new customers. * Adopt: Increase feature and workflow adoption by using AI and agentic tooling to surface next-best actions for customers and internal teams. * Expand: Use AI-informed signals to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, ensuring platform architecture supports growth without significant rework. * Retain: Apply AI-driven early warning signals to identify churn risk, reliability concerns, or performance issues before they become customer-facing problems. * Translate architecture and AI initiatives into LAER-based business narratives for executives and PE sponsors, showing how technical investments drive customer adoption, expansion, retention, and growth. Hands-On Technical & People Leadership * Provide hands-on technical leadership through production code contributions, pull request reviews, architecture spikes, and proof-of-concept development that validates architectural direction. * Influence strategic decisions through technical credibility, data-informed recommendations, and working prototypes that demonstrate feasibility and business impact. * Lead and unify a 6-10-person team of architects and engineers across multiple R&D teams around shared architecture and AI standards, while balancing team-specific priorities, constraints, and delivery needs. * Build, mentor, and mature an architecture and AI engineering bench that can sustain and scale modernization, AI-first architecture, and agentic tooling capabilities across the company. Enterprise Analytics & Insights Platform (Cloud) * Own the architecture and strategic roadmap for iA's cloud-based Enterprise Analytics & Insights platform, ensuring data quality, platform scalability, and AI/agentic capabilities are aligned across the teams that build and operate it. * Align the platform's architecture with the broader modernization strategy to ensure consistent technical direction across the enterprise. * Use the platform to define, validate, and scale reusable AI-first patterns, including insight generation, anomaly detection, and agentic analytics, that can be adopted across the enterprise. Partnership with Hardware Teams * Lead architectural alignment between software, AI, and hardware teams, ensuring system designs account for hardware dependencies, integration points, and physical constraints. * Identify and lead AI and agentic opportunities within hardware-adjacent workflows, including operational monitoring and scaling decisions for PoDs, SSP, and MDS across the NEXiA platform. * Lead cross-functional alignment between software and hardware teams, ensuring architecture decisions reflect full-system trade-offs across software, hardware, integration, and operational constraints. ## Related Videos - [Are Code Reviews Worth It? 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