Senior AI Architect

The Senior AI Architect leads the design and implementation of cutting-edge AI platforms and data systems. This role combines strong hands-on engineering with strategic innovation to design, prototype, and deliver intelligent, data-driven solutions that power analytics, machine learning, and next-generation AI applications. This role collaborates closely with business and technology teams to turn ideas into working solutions, enabling faster insights, better decisions, and enterprise-wide innovation through data.

Advanced AI Solutions & Engineering

• Hands-on design and development of GenAI, LLM-based, and agentic AI solutions.

• Architect and implement repeatable, enterprise AI patterns (e.g., RAG, agent orchestration, multimodal pipelines) with working reference implementations.

• Build reusable AI components, templates, and accelerators to enable consistent adoption across teams.

• Implement and optimize scalable, secure, and resilient AI pipelines, aligned with enterprise data and governance standards.

• Lead PoC-to-production transitions, ensuring operational readiness, observability, and cost controls

AWS-Centric AI Architecture

• Design AI and GenAI solutions using AWS-native services, including (but not limited to)

• Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, Lambda, ECS/EKS

• S3, DynamoDB, Aurora, OpenSearch

• IAM, KMS, VPC, CloudWatch

• Define cost, performance, and scalability guardrails for AI workloads on AWS.

• Ensure architectures follow Well-Architected Framework principles.

Innovation & Applied AI

• Lead initiatives to explore, validate, and scale emerging AI technologies.

• Translate research and prototypes into production-ready capabilities.

• Collaborate across teams to embed AI-driven insights and automation into business processes.

• Evaluate and shape next-generation AI trends, including agentic systems and autonomous workflows.

Technology Leadership & Best Practices

• Champion hands-on experimentation and rapid solution delivery while maintaining technical excellence.

• Define and promote engineering standards that balance agility, scalability, and governance.

• Collaborate with security, compliance, and governance partners to ensure responsible data and AI usage

• Mentor engineers and architects in modern data and AI development practices.

Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

• Act as a trusted advisor for business and technology leaders on data-driven innovation.

• Lead internal workshops and training sessions to accelerate AI adoption.

• Represent the organization in external forums, conferences, and publications focused on data and AI innovation.

• • 10+ years of experience in enterprise data architecture or engineering with deep expertise in AI and cloud-native data platforms.
  • Proven ability to design and scale large-language-model (LLM) and generative AI systems.
  • Proficiency in Python, SQL, and modern data frameworks
  • Design AI and GenAI solutions using AWS-native services, including (but not limited to):Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, Lambda, ECS/EKS
  • Strong background in distributed systems, and cloud architecture (AWS)
  • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

  Preferred:

  • Experience with agentic AI design patterns, including tool-use orchestration, autonomous workflow agents, or AI copilots.
  • Proficiency in API design, microservices, and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
  • Demonstrated ability to rapidly prototype new AI concepts and transition successful PoCs into production-grade systems.

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/benefits.

#LI-DS1

#LI-DS1