Backend AI Architect with 15yrs exp

Introduction:

This position is for a highly experienced Backend AI Architect with a total of 15 years of experience. The role will be based in Reston, VA. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in back end architecture, distributed systems, microservices, event driven architecture, API design, cloud native technologies, and AI driven intelligent platforms.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and design enterprise-scale backend platforms that are secure, highly available, performant, and cost-efficient.
• Define and govern service architecture standards, API contracts, and runtime patterns across development teams.
• Drive technical decisions that balance innovation, maintainability, operability, and long-term platform health.
• Mentor and guide engineering teams in implementing services, APIs, and shared platform capabilities.
• Define and implement AI augmented backend architectures, including inference aware service patterns and model serving strategies.
• Integrate LLMs and GenAI capabilities into customer facing features and internal platforms.
• Establish spec-driven development workflows leveraging AI to improve developer productivity and quality.
• Partner with Data Science, ML Engineering, and Product teams to operationalize models with strong SLAs, security, and cost controls.
• Champion Developer Experience (DevEx) by improving local development tooling, CI/CD quality gates, and test automation.
• Establish best practices for coding standards, secure development, performance optimization, and reliability engineering.
• Promote observability first design using logs, metrics, traces, and AI-assisted insights.

Requirements:

Required Skills:

• Back End Architect
• Distributed Systems
• Microservices
• Event Driven Architecture
• API Design
• Cloud Native
• AWS
• DevEx
• CI/CD
• Observability
• LLM
• GenAI
• RAG
• AI Agents
• Inference Architecture
• Platform Engineering
• Champion Developer Experience

Preferred Skills:

• Managerial experience
• Stakeholder management
• Leading large, matrixed, multi-vendor teams
• Ability to balance strategic vision with hands-on architectural depth