AI Architect

Lead Architect - Public Sector

Location: Remote USA

Mode of Hire: Fulltime

Salary: $220K  Annually

We are building a next-generation Vision AI software platform designed specifically for US-based public sector clients — spanning federal agencies, defense contractors, smart-city programs, and critical infrastructure operators. As our Lead Architect / Head of Architecture, you will be the technical authority shaping every layer of the platform: from constrained edge devices streaming sensor data via MQTT, through GPU-accelerated inference running on NVIDIA hardware, to the cloud-side orchestration and data pipelines that give our clients actionable intelligence.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Own the end-to-end architecture of the Edge AI / IoT platform, defining reference designs, component boundaries, data flows, and integration contracts across edge, on-premises, and cloud tiers.
• Drive adoption of open standards (MQTT, VSS, OPC-UA, ONVIF, etc.) and NVIDIA ecosystem tooling (CUDA, TensorRT, Jetson, NGC) across the product.
• Establish and govern architecture decision records (ADRs), technology radar, and technical roadmap in close collaboration with product management and the CTO.

Security & Compliance

• Lead the architecture design to achieve and maintain NIST SP 800-171 compliance, with a clear pathway toward CMMC Level 2 (and Level 3 where required by contracts).
• Define zero-trust principles, secure-by-design patterns, cryptographic key management, and supply chain security practices for all platform components.
• Collaborate with our compliance and legal teams to produce architecture documentation, system security plans (SSPs), and evidence packages required during government procurement.

Engineering Excellence & Team Enablement

• Serve as the primary technical mentor for a globally distributed engineering team spanning multiple time zones; run architecture reviews, design sprints, and internal tech talks.
• Define and enforce engineering standards: API design, containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD pipeline quality gates, observability, and disaster recovery.
• Partner with engineering leads to decompose the architecture into actionable epics and ensure architectural intent is preserved through implementation.

Client & Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as the senior technical point of contact during pre-sales and onboarding with US public sector clients, translating customer mission requirements into platform capabilities.
• Participate in government-facing technical evaluations, RFP responses, and architecture briefings — demonstrating deep understanding of federal IT environments (FedRAMP-adjacent infrastructure, air-gapped deployments, etc.).
• Maintain trusted relationships with technology partners including NVIDIA, cloud providers, and standards bodies relevant to the IoT / edge AI space.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a principal architect, staff engineer, or equivalent technical leadership role.
• Proven track record designing large-scale distributed systems with real-time or near-real-time constraints — IoT telemetry pipelines, sensor fusion, or similar.
• Deep expertise with MQTT (broker architecture, QoS, retained messages, MQTT over TLS) and at least one complementary messaging/streaming technology (Kafka, AMQP, ROS 2, etc.).
• Hands-on experience with the NVIDIA ecosystem: CUDA development, TensorRT optimization, Jetson or similar edge AI hardware, and NVIDIA N/ Triton Inference Server.
• Solid understanding of Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS) or comparable hierarchical signal / data modeling standards for edge device abstraction.
• Practical knowledge of NIST SP 800-171 controls and experience translating them into concrete architecture and engineering requirements.
• Proficiency in containerized, cloud-native architectures: Kubernetes, Helm, service mesh, GitOps, and modern observability stacks (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills — able to produce crisp architecture diagrams and documents for both engineering peers and non-technical government stakeholders.
• Ability to work effectively across globally distributed teams, exercising influence without direct authority.

Nice to Have

• Experience with CMMC Level 2/3 assessments or FedRAMP authorization processes.
• Familiarity with additional edge / embedded protocols: OPC-UA, DDS, Matter, LoRaWAN, or TSN.
• Background in one or more US public sector verticals: defense, smart cities, utilities / SCADA, transportation, or emergency services.
• Contributions to open-source projects in the IoT, edge AI, or cloud-native space.
• Experience with software-defined networking, 5G private networks, or network slicing for edge deployments.
• Domain-specific certifications like Google Cloud Platform, TOGAF, Open Group, etc.
• US Person status (useful for certain client engagements, not a hard requirement).