Opening for AI Architect || Nashville, TN - Hybrid || Contract

Job Title: AI Architect

Location: Nashville, TN-Hybrid

Mode of Hire: Contract

Job Description:

Role Overview:
We are seeking a visionary to lead the design, governance, and implementation of next-generation Generative AI and Agentic Systems across the enterprise. This role is responsible for translating complex business problems into scalable, secure, and production-grade AI solutions, with a strong emphasis on autonomous agents, intelligent workflows, and AI-augmented SDLC ecosystems.

The ideal candidate brings a rare combination of enterprise-scale system architecture expertise, deep Generative AI knowledge, and hands-on engineering leadership, enabling them to operate seamlessly across strategy, design, and execution phases.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Architecture & System Design

• Own the end-to-end architecture of large-scale, distributed GenAI platforms, including microservices, data pipelines, and AI inference layers.
• Define reference architectures and design patterns for Generative AI, agentic workflows, and AI-enabled enterprise platforms.
• Ensure all systems are secure, scalable, fault-tolerant, cost-efficient, and production-ready.

2. Agentic Systems & Workflow Orchestration

• Design and implement autonomous and semi-autonomous multi-agent systems using frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel, or custom orchestration engines.
• Enable agent collaboration, task planning, memory management, tool use, and self-reflection capabilities.
• Architect agent-driven enterprise workflows (e.g., code generation, testing, incident triage, knowledge discovery, and business process automation).

3. Generative Model Engineering

• Lead model selection, fine-tuning, and optimization of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Small Language Models (SLMs), including OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, LLaMA, Mistral, and domain-specific models.
• Apply Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) techniques such as LoRA, QLoRA, adapters, and distillation to optimize cost and performance.
• Oversee Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures, vector search, prompt engineering, memory augmentation, and evaluation pipelines.
• Drive experimentation with Diffusion models, GANs, and multimodal models where applicable.

4. LLMOps / MLOps & Cloud Infrastructure

• Architect and standardize LLMOps/MLOps pipelines for training, evaluation, deployment, observability, and lifecycle management.
• Design cloud-native AI platforms on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, leveraging GPU/TPU infrastructure, Kubernetes, and serverless computing patterns.
• Implement comprehensive monitoring for latency, hallucinations, model drift, cost usage, security events, and SLA compliance.
• Optimize inference using techniques such as quantization, batching, caching, and intelligent model routing.

5. AI-Driven SDLC & Developer Experience

• Architect AI-augmented Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) systems, including:
  • Agentic code generation and refactoring
  • Automated test generation and validation
  • Intelligent CI/CD workflows
  • AI-powered documentation and knowledge management
• Partner with platform and Developer Experience (DevEx) teams to embed AI into developer tooling and workflows.

6. Governance, Security & Responsible AI

• Define AI governance frameworks covering model risk, data privacy, lineage, explainability, bias detection, and regulatory compliance.
• Ensure alignment with security, legal, and regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR, as applicable).
• Establish robust guardrails for safe agent behavior, access control, prompt injection defense, and data leakage prevention.

7. Strategy, Leadership & Collaboration

• Serve as a technical thought leader and advisor to executive stakeholders.
• Lead and mentor senior engineers, data scientists, and AI researchers.
• Manage multiple concurrent initiatives while balancing innovation with reliable delivery.
• Drive buy-vs-build decisions, vendor evaluations, and strategic roadmap planning.
• Evangelize AI best practices across engineering, product, and data teams.

Required Qualifications:

Core Engineering & Architecture

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise-grade full-stack or platform architecture.
• Strong background in product engineering, distributed systems, and microservices.
• Demonstrated ability to design mission-critical, high-availability systems.

AI / ML & Generative AI Expertise

• Strong theoretical and hands-on expertise in:
  • Deep Learning (CNN, RNN, LSTM)
  • Transformer architectures and attention mechanisms
• Deep experience with Generative AI, including:
  • Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and prompt engineering
  • GANs and Diffusion models
• Proven experience integrating with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Hugging Face, or equivalent platforms.

Technical Stack:

• Expert-level proficiency in Python; strong working knowledge of C++ and Java.
• Extensive experience with PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Keras.
• Expertise in designing RESTful APIs, GraphQL, and event-driven architectures using Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Strong understanding of databases, vector stores, and streaming systems.

Cloud & DevOps:

• Proven track record of deploying and operating large-scale ML/AI workloads in production.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (Terraform, Bicep, or CloudFormation).
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, observability stacks, and secure cloud networking.

Preferred Other Skills:

• Experience in Healthcare, Payer, or Life Sciences domains, including regulated data environments.
• Exposure to edge AI, on-device inference, or real-time decision-making systems.
• Contributions to open-source AI/ML projects or published technical thought leadership.
• Experience building internal AI platforms or AI Centers of Excellence (CoE).