Principal AI Architect

PRINCIPAL AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER /

TECHNICAL ARCHITECT

Senior technical leader for AI application development and intelligent automation delivery

LOCATION

Hyderabad, India

EXPERIENCE

10+ Years

DOMAIN

Application Development, AI & Intelligent Automation

The Opportunity

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer / AI Technical Architect to serve as a senior technical leader for our AI application development organization in Hyderabad. This is a hands-on leadership role for an experienced engineer who has architected, built, and delivered enterprise-scale applications and AI-enabled solutions.

The successful candidate will act as a technical anchor for the engineering organization, providing architectural direction, mentoring engineers, establishing engineering standards, and helping guide delivery across a growing portfolio of intelligent applications.

ROLE POSITIONING This is a hands-on Staff+/Principal-level technical leadership role, not initially a direct people-management position. The priorities are architecture ownership, delivery quality, engineering standards, mentorship, and AI application execution.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Own the architecture and technical strategy for AI-powered and intelligent applications across the organization.
• Serve as a senior technical leader and architecture resource for the Hyderabad AI engineering team.
• Define engineering standards, architectural patterns, development practices, and technical governance processes.
• Review solution designs, architectural decisions, and complex implementation approaches.
• Mentor engineers, architects, and technical leads across multiple teams.
• Guide teams in selecting appropriate technologies, frameworks, tooling, and implementation patterns.
• Establish standards for code quality, scalability, security, observability, and operational excellence.

Solution Architecture & Engineering

• Design and build production-grade solutions leveraging Generative AI, Large Language Models, Agentic AI systems, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, AI orchestration frameworks, modern data platforms, and cloud-native architectures.
• Architect scalable APIs, application services, integrations, full-stack applications, and data platforms.
• Establish reusable frameworks, accelerators, SDKs, and reference architectures that improve delivery speed and quality.
• Drive secure, maintainable, testable, and scalable engineering practices.
• Solve complex technical challenges and establish patterns adopted across the engineering organization.

Business Partnership & Delivery

• Partner with business stakeholders, product leaders, and client-facing teams to translate business requirements into executable technical solutions.
• Lead technical discussions for strategic AI initiatives, complex client engagements, and delivery programs.
• Balance innovation, speed, quality, maintainability, and business outcomes when making architectural decisions.
• Drive technical alignment across multiple teams and initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience designing and delivering enterprise applications.
• Demonstrated experience serving as a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Solution Architect, Technical Architect, or Technical Lead.
• Strong experience building and delivering production-grade AI-powered applications.
• Strong experience with Python and modern backend application development.
• Experience designing and operating scalable APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in modern full-stack application development, including front-end, backend, integration, data, and cloud architecture.
• Experience with cloud-native application development and Azure-based solution delivery.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, DevOps, automated testing, and modern software delivery practices.
• Experience with Large Language Models, Agentic AI systems, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, model orchestration, prompt engineering, and AI evaluation or monitoring.
• Strong understanding of application security principles, authentication, authorization, and secrets management.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL data platforms.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and lead technical decision-making across teams.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated success translating ambiguous business requirements into scalable technical solutions.

Preferred Qualifications

AI & Agentic Development

• Experience with agentic AI architectures, multi-agent systems, LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, Model Context Protocol, and other AI orchestration frameworks.
• Experience with vector databases and AI search platforms, including Azure AI Search, OpenSearch, or Pinecone.
• Experience implementing AI evaluation frameworks, LLM observability, prompt-pipeline tracing, cost optimization, and production monitoring.
• Experience designing production RAG architectures and AI governance patterns.

Claude & Modern AI Engineering

• Hands-on experience with Claude Code or similar AI-assisted development environments.
• Experience incorporating AI-powered development workflows into engineering teams to improve productivity, quality, and delivery velocity.
• Claude Certified Architect or Developer, certification is strongly preferred.

Modern Software Engineering

• Experience with FastAPI, Django, or Flask, including OpenAPI/Swagger and contract-first API design.
• Experience designing, versioning, packaging, and distributing SDKs, reusable platforms, internal frameworks, or developer tooling.
• Experience with Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions, pytest, and modern code-quality tooling.
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, Azure Monitor, centralized logging, distributed tracing, and SLI/SLO definition.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, or Azure Kubernetes Service, including resilient and highly available design.
• Experience with Terraform or other Infrastructure-as-Code practices.

AI-Enabled Development

• Hands-on experience with GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or similar AI-assisted development environments.
• Experience incorporating AI-powered development workflows to improve engineering productivity, quality, governance, and delivery velocity.
• Experience designing and deploying applications using AI APIs, MCP, tool-calling frameworks, structured outputs, and context-engineering techniques.

Industry & Leadership Experience

• Experience supporting enterprise B2B environments in professional services, legal, tax, finance, healthcare, or compliance industries.
• Experience leading distributed or global engineering teams.
• Track record of establishing engineering standards and technical governance.
• Experience working in both startup and enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting client-facing consulting or professional services organizations.

Additional Differentiators

• Open-source contributions, published technical content, patents, conference presentations, or recognized technical leadership.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience operating large-scale cloud-native platforms.

What Success Looks Like

• Become a trusted technical leader and architecture resource for the Hyderabad AI engineering team.
• Improve engineering quality, architecture consistency, and delivery predictability.
• Establish scalable standards for designing and delivering AI-powered applications.
• Mentor and elevate senior engineering talent across the organization.
• Create reusable patterns, accelerators, and technical foundations that improve delivery across client engagements.
• Serve as a strategic technical partner to engineering, delivery, and business leadership.

About alliantgroup

alliantgroup is a global professional services firm focused on business consulting, digital transformation, taxation, and accounting services. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, alliantgroup serves clients across the United States and the United Kingdom through domestic and international delivery teams.

About alliantTALENT

alliantTALENT is the India-based delivery organization supporting alliantgroup's global operations. With more than 1,000 professionals in Hyderabad, alliantTALENT provides technology, consulting, and professional services support to clients and teams across the United States and United Kingdom.