AI Solutions Architect

Description
The AI Solutions Architect serves as the technical architecture leader for enterprise AI solutions within the client's environment AI Center of Excellence and reports directly to the Vice President of Enterprise Architecture. This role is responsible for designing secure, scalable, supportable, and economically sustainable AI-enabled solutions from initial concept through production deployment and ongoing operation.
The AI Solutions Architect owns the end-to-end architecture of assigned AI initiatives, including business requirements, artificial intelligence models, agents, data and knowledge sources, integrations, identity, security, infrastructure, observability, operational support, and governance controls. The role ensures that AI capabilities are not developed as isolated experiments, but as enterprise-grade solutions that integrate with existing business processes, platforms, applications, and data ecosystems.
The architect works directly with business stakeholders, product owners, engineering teams, Cybersecurity, Data and Analytics, Infrastructure, Legal, Risk, and vendor partners while ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture strategy, standards, governance, and technology roadmaps. The individual must be able to translate business objectives into actionable architecture, validate technical designs through hands-on analysis and prototyping, and clearly communicate architectural decisions, risks, costs, and trade-offs. This position requires demonstrated experience delivering production generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, machine learning, and agentic AI solutions. Experience limited to strategy, presentations, vendor demonstrations, or proofs of concept does not satisfy the requirements of the role.
AI Solution Architecture
Design end-to-end architectures for enterprise AI solutions, including generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, conversational AI, predictive machine learning, intelligent automation, computer vision, speech, and agentic AI capabilities.
Translate business requirements into comprehensive technical solution designs covering applications, models, agents, data, integrations, security, cloud infrastructure, observability, operations, and governance.
Determine whether artificial intelligence is appropriate for a given business problem and recommend alternative technical approaches when AI does not provide sufficient value, reliability, or economic benefit.
Define current-state, target-state, and transitional architectures for AI initiatives, including technical dependencies, shared capabilities, implementation phases, and architecture risks.
Ensure AI solutions align with enterprise architecture standards, cloud strategies, approved technology platforms, cybersecurity requirements, data governance policies, and operational support models.
Create architecture acceptance criteria and validate that proposed solutions meet functional, technical, security, operational, and business requirements before production deployment.

Generative AI and Model Architecture
Design production-grade generative AI solutions using commercial, open-source, hosted, dedicated, and privately deployed models.
Evaluate and select language, vision, speech, embedding, reranking, and multimodal models based on solution quality, latency, cost, context requirements, data sensitivity, deployment options, scalability, supportability, and vendor risk.
Design multi-model architectures that support model routing, fallback, portability, workload specialization, and reduced dependency on a single model provider.
Define prompt architecture, context assembly, structured-output requirements, response validation, model fallback, caching, rate limiting, and error-handling patterns.
Evaluate model performance using repeatable technical and business criteria rather than vendor benchmarks or demonstration results alone.
Maintain awareness of model capabilities, limitations, licensing considerations, deployment constraints, and rapidly changing AI platform capabilities.

Agentic AI Architecture
Design secure and reliable AI agents that can reason, use tools, maintain state, interact with enterprise applications, and execute controlled business workflows.
Define agent responsibilities, tool boundaries, memory models, workflow states, delegation rules, approval requirements, and termination conditions.
Design single-agent and multi-agent solutions using deterministic workflow controls around nondeterministic model behavior.
Establish architecture patterns for human-in-the-loop review, escalation, exception handling, retries, timeouts, circuit breakers, compensating actions, and emergency termination.
Define secure agent-to-user, agent-to-agent, and agent-to-tool interaction patterns.
Prevent uncontrolled agent autonomy by enforcing least privilege, constrained tool access, transaction limits, validation rules, and approval gates for consequential actions.
Partner with AI engineering teams to establish consistent agent development, orchestration, testing, deployment, and lifecycle management standards.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Knowledge Architecture
Design enterprise retrieval-augmented generation solutions across structured, unstructured, document, transactional, graph, and operational data sources.
Define document ingestion, parsing, chunking, metadata enrichment, embedding, indexing, retrieval, reranking, citation, and knowledge-refresh strategies.
Design lexical, semantic, vector, hybrid, graph-enhanced, and structured retrieval patterns based on the characteristics of each use case.
Ensure retrieval solutions preserve source-system security, authorization, data classification, retention, and user entitlements.
Establish patterns for authorization-aware retrieval, source attribution, content freshness, provenance, and deletion.
Define controls for retrieval poisoning, outdated content, duplicate information, conflicting sources, inappropriate data exposure, and unsupported model responses.
Evaluate retrieval quality, answer relevance, groundedness, citation accuracy, and knowledge coverage before production deployment.

AI Evaluation and Quality Engineering
Define measurable quality standards and evaluation strategies for generative AI, retrieval, machine learning, and agentic AI solutions.
Establish golden datasets, benchmark scenarios, regression suites, adversarial tests, and business acceptance criteria.
Define evaluation methods for accuracy, relevance, groundedness, hallucination, toxicity, bias, safety, retrieval quality, tool selection, tool-call accuracy, agent trajectory, and task completion.
Implement automated evaluation gates within AI development and deployment pipelines.
Define the appropriate use of human evaluation, expert review, LLM-based evaluation, deterministic testing, and statistical analysis.
Ensure model, prompt, retrieval, agent, and tool changes are tested against previous production behavior before release.
Establish production quality thresholds, monitoring requirements, rollback criteria, and exception-management processes.

AI Security, Identity, and Trust Architecture
Design AI solutions in accordance with enterprise cybersecurity, privacy, identity, compliance, and risk-management requirements.
Perform AI-specific threat modeling covering prompt injection, indirect prompt injection, data poisoning, retrieval poisoning, sensitive-data exposure, model extraction, system-prompt leakage, insecure tool invocation, excessive agency, and downstream code execution.
Define identity propagation and authorization patterns across users, agents, models, tools, APIs, applications, data sources, and external services.
Design least-privilege access, workload identities, delegated authorization, service accounts, session isolation, tenant isolation, and approval controls.
Ensure agents cannot access data, tools, or transactions beyond the permissions of the requesting user or approved system identity.
Define security controls for AI gateways, model endpoints, vector stores, knowledge bases, MCP servers, external tools, plugins, third-party models, and vendor services.
Establish auditability that records who initiated an AI request, what context was used, which decisions were made, which tools were invoked, who approved an action, and what action was executed.
Partner with Cybersecurity teams to conduct red-team exercises, abuse-case testing, vulnerability assessments, and production-readiness reviews.

Data and Integration Architecture
Design data flows and integration architectures connecting AI solutions with enterprise applications, cloud services, data platforms, customer platforms, contact-center systems, operational systems, and external providers.
Define integration patterns using REST, GraphQL, gRPC, APIs, messaging, event streaming, batch processing, change-data capture, and workflow orchestration.
Define tool and function-calling contracts, schema validation, idempotency, rate limiting, error handling, transaction boundaries, and compensating actions.
Design integrations with enterprise platforms such as Salesforce, Snowflake, ServiceNow, ERP solutions, digital platforms, and internal business applications.
Develop and maintain solution-level integration and data-flow documentation identifying all systems, interfaces, ownership boundaries, security controls, and dependencies.
Ensure data contracts, metadata, lineage, data quality, classification, retention, privacy, consent, masking, and deletion requirements are incorporated into solution designs.
Identify shared services, reusable connectors, common APIs, enterprise tools, and platform capabilities that can reduce duplication and accelerate delivery.
Prevent AI agents and applications from becoming uncontrolled or redundant integration layers.

Cloud and AI Platform Architecture
Design AI workloads using approved enterprise cloud platforms, infrastructure services, network patterns, and deployment standards.
Architect model endpoints, AI gateways, agent runtimes, vector and graph stores, knowledge services, containerized workloads, serverless components, and Kubernetes-based deployments.
Define private connectivity, secrets management, encryption, key management, workload isolation, network segmentation, and access controls.
Design for scalability, high availability, regional resilience, recoverability, capacity management, and service continuity.
Determine when to use managed AI services, vendor-hosted capabilities, open-source technologies, dedicated deployments, or internally operated platforms.
Define infrastructure-as-code, environment management, deployment automation, configuration management, and platform support requirements.
Work with Infrastructure and Platform Engineering teams to ensure AI workloads are production-ready, monitored, supportable, and aligned with enterprise cloud standards.

LLMOps, MLOps, and AgentOps
Define lifecycle-management practices for models, prompts, agents, tools, datasets, embeddings, knowledge indexes, evaluation suites, and configuration artifacts.
Establish versioning, traceability, approval, deployment, promotion, rollback, and retirement requirements across development, testing, staging, and production environments.
Design CI/CD pipelines that include automated testing, security scanning, evaluation gates, policy checks, and production-readiness validation.
Define canary, shadow, blue-green, phased-release, and feature-flag patterns for AI solution deployment.
Establish model, prompt, agent, retrieval, and tool rollback mechanisms, kill switches, and emergency disablement procedures.
Define experiment tracking, release documentation, environment reproducibility, and audit evidence requirements.
Ensure production incidents can be traced to the specific model, prompt, agent, tool, data, retrieval index, code, and configuration versions involved.

AI Observability and Production Operations
Define end-to-end observability for user requests, prompt construction, context assembly, retrieval, model calls, agent decisions, tool executions, workflow transitions, human approvals, responses, and downstream actions.
Establish logging, tracing, monitoring, alerting, dashboards, and service-level objectives for AI solutions.
Define operational metrics for latency, availability, model usage, token consumption, cost, failure rates, retrieval quality, groundedness, safety violations, tool accuracy, task completion, agent loops, escalation rates, and user outcomes.
Ensure observability integrates with enterprise monitoring, logging, incident-management, and support platforms.
Define production support models, ownership boundaries, runbooks, escalation processes, incident response, problem management, and recovery procedures.
Establish controls for detecting model regressions, data drift, prompt failures, retrieval degradation, unexpected agent behavior, and cost anomalies.
Partner with engineering and operations teams to ensure AI solutions can be supported outside of the original development team.

Architecture Governance and Documentation
Conduct architecture reviews for AI initiatives to validate design quality, scalability, security, compliance, maintainability, supportability, and alignment with enterprise standards.
Represent AI solutions in Architecture Review Board, Software Governance Committee, security review, data governance, and other required governance processes under the direction of the Vice President of Enterprise Architecture.
Produce Technical Requirements Documents, architecture decision records, solution architecture diagrams, integration and data-flow diagrams, sequence diagrams, deployment views, trust-boundary diagrams, and operational models.
Define measurable nonfunctional requirements covering availability, performance, resilience, security, privacy, accessibility, auditability, maintainability, portability, recoverability, supportability, cost, data retention, model quality, and AI safety.
Document architecture assumptions, risks, constraints, dependencies, alternatives, trade-offs, exceptions, and compensating controls.
Maintain reusable AI reference architectures, design patterns, decision trees, guardrails, templates, and implementation guidance.
Ensure architecture documentation remains current throughout delivery and accurately reflects the production implementation.
Identify technical debt, platform duplication, unsupported technologies, control gaps, and architecture risks requiring remediation.

Technology Strategy and Vendor Evaluation
Evaluate emerging AI models, agent frameworks, orchestration platforms, vector and graph technologies, AI gateways, observability tools, evaluation platforms, and development frameworks.
Conduct technical due diligence for AI vendors, products, managed services, and external model providers.
Assess vendor capabilities across architecture fit, security, privacy, data ownership, integration, operational maturity, portability, scalability, availability, support, licensing, cost, roadmap, and lock-in risk.
Review statements of work, technical proposals, reference architectures, implementation plans, and proof-of-concept results.
Validate vendor claims through technical testing, architecture analysis, security review, and measurable acceptance criteria.
Recommend platform consolidation, shared capabilities, reusable components, and vendor rationalization where appropriate.
Provide architecture recommendations that balance business value, delivery speed, risk, long-term maintainability, and total cost of ownership.

Business and Stakeholder Engagement
Meet with business stakeholders, product owners, engineering leaders, and operational teams to understand objectives, workflows, pain points, risks, and expected outcomes.
Translate business requirements into clear architecture, technical requirements, integration specifications, quality measures, and delivery constraints.
Facilitate cross-functional architecture workshops and design sessions.
Present architecture recommendations to leadership, clearly explaining alternatives, trade-offs, risks, costs, dependencies, and expected business value.
Define baseline performance and measurable success criteria for AI-enabled business processes.
Ensure business owners understand model limitations, human oversight requirements, operational changes, failure scenarios, and adoption responsibilities.
Partner with product and business teams to measure production outcomes and determine whether AI solutions are producing sustainable business value.
Recommend discontinuation, redesign, or replacement of AI solutions that do not meet quality, risk, operational, or economic expectations.

AI Economics and Performance Engineering
Develop cost models for model inference, token consumption, embeddings, vector storage, retrieval, data processing, infrastructure, licensing, support, and vendor services.
Design solutions using model routing, caching, context optimization, prompt optimization, batching, workload prioritization, and appropriate model sizing.
Define cost-per-transaction, cost-per-user, cost-per-business-outcome, and projected total cost of ownership.
Evaluate the economic trade-offs between large and small models, hosted and self-managed models, real-time and batch processing, and shared versus dedicated infrastructure.
Establish cost monitoring, budget thresholds, usage controls, capacity forecasts, and anomaly detection.
Ensure AI prototypes are evaluated against realistic production volume, concurrency, latency, and cost assumptions before approval.
Skills
Architecture, Solution architecture, AI, RAG, LLM, Cloud, Azure, java
Additional Skills & Qualifications
AI Context (Why This Hiring Is Urgent)
The organization has shifted from a corporate framework mindset back to a startup mentality driven by AI
Over 200 AI agents are already running in the enterprise; ~10 new applications released per week
An AI war room in Chicago is the epicenter of activity; executives including the President and CFO are personally vibe-coding
Four active AI workstreams: legacy code refactoring, LLM/RAG systems, AI agents, and agentic (swarm) AI
Real use case example: RAG system built from RV service manuals so technicians can query an AI instead of YouTube
Enterprise Architecture is at risk of becoming irrelevant unless it rapidly proves its value in this AI-native environment; CTO has acknowledged the leadership's skepticism around traditional (pre-AI) EA's mission
Candidate Profile & Requirements
Personality is #1: Must be likable, relationship-builders who can earn trust across engineering, business, and executive stakeholders
Builders, not librarians: Must own problems end-to-end, not delegate or wait for direction; "CEO of their own brand" mentality
AI-native: Must live and breathe AI - personally using tools like Claude, Gemini, Grok, Notebook LM, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Notion; able to rapidly switch models and validate outputs
Speed and agility: Must keep pace with or exceed the delivery pipeline; Architects cannot be the bottleneck
Thought leaders, not framework guardians: TOGAF/DoDAF experience is actively a negative signal in this context; regulated-industry-heavy backgrounds are likely a poor fit for a startup environment
Chicago-area, on-site: Must be present in the AI War Room; on-site days vary by week but presence at the table is essential
SAs must be able to present and defend architectures in front of the Architecture Review Board (ARB)
Verified, hands-on evidence of experience required - AI has made resumes unreliable
Experience Level
Expert Level
Job Type & Location
This is a Contract to Hire position based out of Lincolnshire, IL.
Pay and Benefits
The pay range for this position is $85.00 - $110.00/hr.
Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment. Benefits are subject to change and may be subject to specific elections, plan, or program terms. If eligible, the benefits available for this temporary role may include the following: Medical, dental & vision Critical Illness, Accident, and Hospital 401(k) Retirement Plan - Pre-tax and Roth post-tax contributions available Life Insurance (Voluntary Life & AD&D for the employee and dependents) Short and long-term disability Health Spending Account (HSA) Transportation benefits Employee Assistance Program Time Off/Leave (PTO, Vacation or Sick Leave)
Workplace Type
This is a fully onsite position in Lincolnshire,IL.
Application Deadline
This position is anticipated to close on Aug 20, 2026.

About TEKsystems

We're partners in transformation. We help clients activate ideas and solutions to take advantage of a new world of opportunity. We are a team of 80,000 strong, working with over 6,000 clients, including 80% of the Fortune 500, across North America, Europe and Asia. As an industry leader in Full-Stack Technology Services, Talent Services, and real-world application, we work with progressive leaders to drive change. That's the power of true partnership. TEKsystems is an Allegis Group company.

The company is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regards to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.

About TEKsystems and TEKsystems Global Services

We're a leading provider of business and technology services. We accelerate business transformation for our customers. Our expertise in strategy, design, execution and operations unlocks business value through a range of solutions. We're a team of 80,000 strong, working with over 6,000 customers, including 80% of the Fortune 500 across North America, Europe and Asia, who partner with us for our scale, full-stack capabilities and speed. We're strategic thinkers, hands-on collaborators, helping customers capitalize on change and master the momentum of technology. We're building tomorrow by delivering business outcomes and making positive impacts in our global communities. TEKsystems and TEKsystems Global Services are Allegis Group companies. Learn more at TEKsystems.com.

The company is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regard to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.

San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, for all positions located in the city and county of San Francisco, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

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Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI): We may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support parts of our hiring process, including sourcing, screening, and evaluating candidates. AI helps assess applications and qualifications, but final decisions are made by our hiring team. By applying, you acknowledge and agree that your application may be reviewed using AI tools.