AI Architect - Azure & Cloud AI

We are seeking an AI Architect to join our growing AI practice on a high-visibility enterprise engagement. This is a senior, client-facing role where you will provide thought leadership and define the technical direction across a complex, multi-workstream AI program. The client expects a seasoned professional who can hit the ground running - shaping strategy, establishing architecture standards, and driving alignment between business objectives and AI capabilities.

You will be the go-to technical authority for end-to-end Azure AI architecture, ensuring that every solution is scalable, secure, governed, and aligned to real business value. What You’ll Do Thought Leadership & Technical Direction

Serve as the senior technical voice on the engagement, setting the architectural vision and ensuring consistency across workstreams

Define and govern end-to-end Azure AI architecture spanning Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning, and enterprise data platforms

Develop reference architectures, patterns, and reusable assets that accelerate delivery and elevate the practice

Mentor and upskill team members on Azure AI best practices, design patterns, and emerging capabilities

Client Engagement & Solution Architecture

Lead architecture design sessions and workshops with client stakeholders to align on strategy and technical approach

Translate complex business requirements into scalable, secure, and maintainable AI-powered solutions

Map AI use cases to measurable business value, ensuring enterprise standards and governance are embedded from the start

Present architectural recommendations with clarity and confidence to both technical and executive audiences

Technical Delivery

Architect and oversee implementation of AI solutions across Azure OpenAI, Azure ML, and supporting data infrastructure

Establish design standards for model deployment, prompt engineering, data integration, and AI observability

Establish a scalable operating model for AI industrialization by standardizing deployment, monitoring, governance, and support processes across existing AI solutions to improve reliability, reuse, and speed to value

Leverage Model Context Protocols (MCPs) to enable secure, modular integration between agents, enterprise systems, and data sources, creating a more interoperable and extensible agentic AI ecosystem

Implement orchestration and guardrail frameworks for agentic workflows to ensure AI agents can collaborate effectively, access the right contextual information, and operate with appropriate oversight, auditability, and human-in-the-loop controls

Ensure all solutions adhere to enterprise security, compliance, and reliability requirements

Collaborate closely with data, engineering, and business teams to ensure successful end-to-end delivery

Bachelor’s Degree

Preferred education

Master’s Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• 8+ years of experience leading the implementation of enterprise-grade AI and agentic AI solutions across cloud and hybrid environments.

• Design scalable AI platforms leveraging Azure and AWS services, including secure model deployment, orchestration, monitoring, and governance.
• Build and operationalize LLM-powered applications using frameworks such as LangChain and LangGraph.
• Define agentic architectures including multi-agent orchestration, tool calling, memory management, MCP integration patterns, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Establish best practices for AI industrialization, including CI/CD, model lifecycle management, observability, prompt/version management, evaluation frameworks, and guardrails.
• Integrate AI systems with enterprise applications, APIs, vector databases, workflow platforms, and operational systems.
• Collaborate with business, data, security, and engineering teams to translate business requirements into scalable AI architectures.
• Provide technical leadership across architecture reviews, platform strategy, vendor selection, and AI governance initiatives.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Preferred Skills

Familiarity with agentic AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel) and RAG architectures

Experience with Azure data services including Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory, or Microsoft Fabric

Knowledge of AI governance, responsible AI practices, and enterprise security considerations

Azure certifications (e.g., Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure AI Engineer Associate), Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?, IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

• Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

• Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

• Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

• Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

• Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You’ll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you’ll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You’ll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences., IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet., In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better., IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.