Forward Deployed AI Architect

About the Position

We are seeking a Forward Deployed AI Architect to help clients transition AI solutions from pilot to production. Join our team to design AI-native architectures and take ownership of enterprise AI initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Embed with a client account, working directly with business owners, product leaders, engineering teams, security, risk, and operations to take AI solutions from pilot to production
• Design end-to-end AI-native architectures: orchestration, retrieval, integration with systems of record, agent autonomy and guardrails, identity and authorization, evaluation, observability, and cost model
• Own three artifacts that make your impact measurable: a capability economics model - what each AI capability costs and what it earns, so investment decisions are made on evidence; trust-rung evidence for every agent - the documented proof of how much autonomy each agent has earned and under what controls; a knowledge-graph slice of the client domain - the entities, relationships, and constraints the solution depends on, captured so the architecture and the business share one model
• Turn contradictory or incomplete requirements into explicit business decisions with named owners
• Decide, per component and per risk, how much can be delegated to AI - including AI coding agents in the delivery process - and where a human must stay in the loop
• Define how each system is evaluated: how the client will know an assistant or agent fits the business scope, not just that it produces fluent output
• Build proofs of concept and reference implementations when a decision needs evidence or a team needs an example of "good"
• Feed what you learn at the client back into EPAM's AI architecture practice: patterns, reference architectures, and what generation gets wrong

Requirements

• You have taken AI-native systems to production at a client or customer - RAG, assistants, agents or agentic workflows with real users and real business processes behind them - in a solutions architecture, customer engineering, forward-deployed, or consulting role, with architect-level responsibility for the system around the model
• You are a proven solution architect from a consulting or client-facing background who has started building with AI on your own initiative in the last year or so, and wants to make AI-native design at the client's side the center of your work
• A track record of client- or customer-facing architecture: you have framed problems for people who are not technologists, presented options with costs and risks, and got decisions made
• Solid solution or software architecture experience with delivery accountability - systems you designed that shipped and ran
• Depth in integration, distributed systems, cloud, and data-flow architecture at enterprise scale
• Comfort operating with ambiguity, conflicting stakeholders, and shifting requirements, without waiting for clarity before starting
• A habit of writing things down so decisions survive you: ADRs, design documents, evidence for autonomy and risk decisions
• Recent hands-on coding ability, enough to prototype and keep your constraints honest
• Willingness to be on-site with clients and to travel as the engagement requires

Nice to Have

• Regulated-industry experience - financial services, healthcare and life sciences, insurance - including working with security, risk, and compliance functions
• Agent frameworks, tool and function calling, MCP, orchestration patterns, LLM observability
• Identity and authorization for agentic systems (OAuth 2.1, SPIFFE, AuthZEN, DPoP)
• Experience with cost and token economics, or with building business cases for AI capabilities
• Presales, proposal, or account-shaping experience
• Forward-deployed or field engineering background at an AI or data platform vendor

We Offer

• Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance (Subsidized)
• Health Savings Account
• Flexible Spending Accounts (Healthcare, Dependent Care, Commuter)
• Short-Term and Long-Term Disability (Company Provided)
• Life and AD&D Insurance (Company Provided)
• Employee Assistance Program
• Unlimited access to LinkedIn learning solutions
• Matched 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Paid Time Off – the employee will be eligible to accrue 15-25 paid days, depending on specific level and tenure with EPAM (accrual eligibility may change over time)
• Paid Holidays - nine (9) total per year
• Legal Plan and Identity Theft Protection
• Accident Insurance
• Employee Discounts
• Pet Insurance
• Employee Stock Purchase Program
• If otherwise eligible, participation in the discretionary annual bonus program
• If otherwise eligible and hired into a qualifying level, participation in the discretionary Long-Term Incentive (LTI) Program