Principal Architect - Data & AI

AI First Delivery Leadership 

• Define and drive enterprise scale AI first delivery strategies, aligned to customer business vision and executive priorities. 

• Lead end-to-end technical accountability for mission critical, multiprogram engagements, ensuring strategic alignment, architectural integrity, and measurable business outcomes. 

• Establish delivery models that scale intelligent automation, autonomous systems, and AI native execution across programs and portfolios. 

• Act as the executive technical authority during escalations, guiding recovery, transformation, or exit strategies for high-risk or underperforming engagements. 

• Partner with CIO/CTO/CDO leadership to balance innovation, governance, cost, security, and speed at enterprise scale. 

Engineering Excellence 

• Set enterprise architecture standards and technical guardrails across data, AI, platform, and engineering disciplines. 

• Ensure production grade quality through architecture reviews, performance benchmarks, security controls, observability, and operational readiness. 

• Champion modern engineering practices including DevSecOps, platform engineering, CI/CD, SRE, and AI assisted development. 

• Foster a culture of technical rigor, accountability, and continuous evolution across architect and engineering communities. 

Innovation & Thought Leadership 

• Shape forward-looking architecture visions for customers, leveraging emerging AI, data, and platform capabilities. 

• Engage in executive level discussions to influence technology roadmaps, operating models, and innovation investments. 

• Lead creation of reusable assets, reference architectures, accelerators, and IP that scale across customers and industries. 

• Represent GCID as a thought leader in architecture, AI adoption, and largescale transformation. 

Client Engagement & Solutioning 

• Act as a primary technology advisor to CEO/CIO/CTO leadership, aligning architecture decisions with long term business strategy. 

• Translate business imperatives into enterprise grade architecture, blueprints and execution roadmaps. 

• Build trusted relationships with senior customer stakeholders, enabling influence at boardroom and executive steering committee levels. 

• Guide customers through complex tradeoffs involving cost, risk, performance, compliance, and speed to value. 

Team Management & Mentorship 

• Mentor senior architects and engineering leaders, shaping next generation technical leadership. 

• Lead cross functional, cross geography architect communities to scale best practices and innovation. 

• Inspire a culture of ownership, excellence, and outcome driven execution. 

Quality & Compliance 

• Ensure all solutions meet enterprise security, compliance, reliability, and Responsible AI standards. 

• Provide executive oversight to design governance, quality gates, and production readiness for critical workloads. 

• 22+ years of experience in software, data, and platform engineering with 15+ years in enterprise architecture and technical leadership roles. 

• Proven track record of influencing and delivering transformation outcomes at CXO level. 

• Deep expertise in modern delivery methodologies and gotomarket acceleration models. 

• Exceptional executive communication, stakeholder influence, and decision-making skills. 

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent experience; advanced certifications preferred. 

Areas of Expertise 

Enterprise Data Architecture & Modern Platforms 

• Define and govern enterprise wide data and analytics architectures aligned to business strategy. 

• Partner with customer CIO/CDO organizations on modernization, platform consolidation, and cost optimization. 

• Drive accountability for operational stability, scalability, and long term sustainability. 

Data Engineering & Large Scale Data Processing 

• Executive oversight of largescale batch and streaming architectures across cloud and hybrid environments. 

• Define standards for performance, reliability, and operability of data platforms. 

• Champion DataOps and AIOps adoption for continuous optimization. 

Database Platforms, Performance & Capacity Engineering 

• Provide architectural guidance on transactional, analytical, and AI-driven database workloads. 

• Ensure cost efficient, predictable performance at enterprise scale. 

AI First Data Engineering & Unify Your Data 

• Define strategies for agentic AI driven data platforms that scale responsibly. 

• Influence governance, explainability, and humanintheloop adoption at enterprise level. 

• Drive operationalization of autonomous data systems in production environments. 

AI & Advanced Analytics Enablement 

• Shape architecture for largescale AI adoption including RAG, AI agents, and inference platforms. 

• Ensure AI systems meet executive expectations for trust, transparency, performance, and value realization. 

• Embed Responsible AI and governance by design patterns into all solutions. 

Solutioning, Presales & Technical Leadership 

• Lead executive level solutioning during complex deals, renewals, and strategic pursuits. 

• Influence multiyear transformation programs from vision through execution. 

• Act as a trusted advisor to internal leadership on strategic accounts and investments. 

Frontier Consulting Skills 

• Enterprise full stack and platform thinking across data, AI, application, and cloud layers. 

• Lead rapid ideation, pilots, and scaled production deployments with executive sponsorship. 

• Outcomesdriven execution focused on measurable business impact. 

• Comfortable operating with CEO/CIO/CTO stakeholders in high stakes environments. 

Personal Attributes 

• Executive presence with ability to influence at boardroom and CXO levels. 

• Strategic thinker with strong technical depth and business acumen. 

• Decisive, resilient, and comfortable navigating ambiguity. 

• Passionate about innovation, scale, and continuous learning.