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.