Principal AI Architect

PRINCIPAL AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER /

TECHNICAL ARCHITECT

Senior technical leader for AI application development and intelligent automation delivery

LOCATION

Hyderabad, India

EXPERIENCE

10+ Years

DOMAIN

Application Development, AI & Intelligent Automation

The Opportunity

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer / AI Technical Architect to serve as a senior technical leader for our AI application development organization in Hyderabad. This is a hands-on leadership role for an experienced engineer who has architected, built, and delivered enterprise-scale applications and AI-enabled solutions.

The successful candidate will act as a technical anchor for the engineering organization, providing architectural direction, mentoring engineers, establishing engineering standards, and helping guide delivery across a growing portfolio of intelligent applications.

ROLE POSITIONING This is a hands-on Staff+/Principal-level technical leadership role, not initially a direct people-management position. The priorities are architecture ownership, delivery quality, engineering standards, mentorship, and AI application execution.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Own the architecture and technical strategy for AI-powered and intelligent applications across the organization.
• Serve as a senior technical leader and architecture resource for the Hyderabad AI engineering team.
• Define engineering standards, architectural patterns, development practices, and technical governance processes.
• Review solution designs, architectural decisions, and complex implementation approaches.
• Mentor engineers, architects, and technical leads across multiple teams.
• Guide teams in selecting appropriate technologies, frameworks, tooling, and implementation patterns.
• Establish standards for code quality, scalability, security, observability, and operational excellence.

Solution Architecture & Engineering

• Design and build production-grade solutions leveraging Generative AI, Large Language Models, Agentic AI systems, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, AI orchestration frameworks, modern data platforms, and cloud-native architectures.
• Architect scalable APIs, application services, integrations, full-stack applications, and data platforms.
• Establish reusable frameworks, accelerators, SDKs, and reference architectures that improve delivery speed and quality.
• Drive secure, maintainable, testable, and scalable engineering practices.
• Solve complex technical challenges and establish patterns adopted across the engineering organization.

Business Partnership & Delivery

• Partner with business stakeholders, product leaders, and client-facing teams to translate business requirements into executable technical solutions.
• Lead technical discussions for strategic AI initiatives, complex client engagements, and delivery programs.
• Balance innovation, speed, quality, maintainability, and business outcomes when making architectural decisions.
• Drive technical alignment across multiple teams and initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience designing and delivering enterprise applications.
• Demonstrated experience serving as a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Solution Architect, Technical Architect, or Technical Lead.
• Strong experience building and delivering production-grade AI-powered applications.
• Strong experience with Python and modern backend application development.
• Experience designing and operating scalable APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in modern full-stack application development, including front-end, backend, integration, data, and cloud architecture.
• Experience with cloud-native application development and Azure-based solution delivery.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, DevOps, automated testing, and modern software delivery practices.
• Experience with Large Language Models, Agentic AI systems, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, model orchestration, prompt engineering, and AI evaluation or monitoring.
• Strong understanding of application security principles, authentication, authorization, and secrets management.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL data platforms.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and lead technical decision-making across teams.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated success trans…