Senior AI Architect 

Location: Chicago, IL (Hybrid – 3 Days Onsite)
Duration: 6 Months Contract

Overview

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior AI Architect / Senior AI Engineer to join a fast-paced, innovation-driven team. This is a client-facing role requiring a strong blend of technical expertise, solution architecture, stakeholder management, and hands-on development experience. The ideal candidate will be comfortable engaging with executive leadership, defining AI strategies, architecting enterprise solutions, and rapidly delivering production-ready AI applications.

Key Responsibilities

Solution Architecture & Design

• Lead the design and architecture of AI and data-driven solutions for complex business challenges.

• Define scalable, secure, and maintainable architectures aligned with enterprise standards.

• Create technical blueprints, architecture diagrams, API specifications, and solution documentation.

• Present architectural decisions, trade-offs, and recommendations to technical and business stakeholders.

AI & Agentic Development

• Design, build, and deploy AI-powered applications, AI agents, and multi-agent systems.

• Develop solutions leveraging LLMs, Generative AI, RAG architectures, and agentic frameworks.

• Integrate AI systems with enterprise tools, APIs, and data platforms.

• Implement monitoring, evaluation, guardrails, and governance frameworks for AI solutions.

Rapid Prototyping & Delivery

• Translate business requirements into working prototypes and production-ready solutions.

• Deliver high-impact AI applications within aggressive timelines.

• Develop intuitive user experiences, dashboards, and interfaces for business users.

• Iterate quickly based on stakeholder and customer feedback.

Stakeholder & Executive Engagement

• Partner directly with business leaders, product teams, and engineering organizations.

• Facilitate discovery workshops and solutioning sessions with clients and executive stakeholders.

• Present AI strategies, solution roadmaps, and technical recommendations to leadership teams.

• Influence decision-making through strong communication and consulting skills.

Technical Leadership

• Mentor engineers and promote best practices across AI engineering and architecture.

• Drive innovation by evaluating emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and methodologies.

• Collaborate across cross-functional teams to ensure successful solution delivery.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering, solution architecture, or AI engineering experience.

• Strong experience designing and delivering AI/ML and Generative AI solutions.

• Hands-on expertise with LLMs, RAG, AI Agents, and Agentic AI frameworks.

• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.

• Strong proficiency in Python and modern software development practices.

• Experience building full-stack applications and customer-facing solutions.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

• Proven experience working directly with clients, executives, and senior leadership teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AWS Bedrock, AWS Agent Core, LangChain, LangGraph, or similar AI frameworks.

• Consulting, solutioning, or Forward Deployed Engineering experience.

• Experience leading architecture reviews and enterprise-scale AI initiatives.

• Background in delivering AI solutions within large enterprise environments.

Ideal Candidate

• Strong client-facing and executive communication skills.

• Comfortable working in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

• Able to move from concept to prototype rapidly while maintaining production-quality standards.

• Combines deep technical expertise with strong business acumen and consultative problem-solving abilities.