Principal AI Engineering Architect

Principal AI Engineering Architect We're looking for a Principal AI Engineering Architect to lead the design and delivery of complex, multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI — with deep, hands-on mastery of multi-agent agentic AI solutions. This role is ideal for a deeply experienced engineer who owns the hardest architectural challenges, sets technical direction, and serves as the senior technical voice on the engagements they support, while also being able to roll up their sleeves and lead model development, agentic system design, and production delivery end-to-end. In this role, you will operate as the senior technical authority on a cross-functional team, defining architecture across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads, with a strong bias toward AWS-native services and AWS GenAI offerings. You'll partner closely with leadership and clients on technical strategy, lead the design and delivery of complex, production-grade multi-agent systems, mentor experienced engineers, and own high-stakes decisions that shape the long-term success of the systems you build. Why This Role Matters At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate. Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on. What You'll Do Craft & Delivery Define technical strategy and lead architectural design across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems for end-to-end engagements, owning architecture decisions and driving solutions from research through production at scale Architect and ship production-grade multi-agent agentic AI systems, including agent orchestration, tool use, memory, and inter-agent communication patterns Design and build with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore and complementary AWS GenAI services to deploy, scale, and operate agentic workloads securely in production Architect scalable cloud-native solutions with a strong bias toward AWS, including multi-cloud and hybrid strategies where needed (AWS primary, with Azure, GCP, Kubernetes as secondary) Design data architectures including warehouses, data lakes, and pipelines for batch and streaming workloads (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka) Design AI/ML systems including model serving, MLOps pipelines, feature stores, and LLM-based applications (e.g., SageMaker, Bedrock, AgentCore, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face) Build and evolve scalable ML platforms, pipelines, and infrastructure that support reliable, repeatable model development and deployment across teams Define infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and DevOps standards across engagements (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions) Drive performance, scalability, cost, and reliability optimization across deployed systems Ensure architecture meets security, governance, and compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2) Lead cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives Set the standard for AI-forward engineering, using tools like Claude and Cursor with sophistication and helping the team adopt them effectively Collaboration & Communication Partner with senior leadership and clients as the principal technical voice on strategy and direction Translate complex AI tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities into clear narratives that drive decision-making across technical and non-technical stakeholders Lead design reviews and technical discussions, raising the bar for engineering rigor and constructive challenge across the team Engage closely with engineering, data,…