Principal Architect

Zafin is an AI platform company helping regulated institutions modernize how critical work is designed, governed, and delivered. Our technology enables organizations to move faster while maintaining the governance, accountability, and control required in highly regulated environments. Our portfolio includes Zafin AIOS , an agent orchestration platform for governed AI work; the Zafin Banking Platform , which helps banks modernize product, pricing, offers, billing, loyalty, and relationship management; and Zafin IO , an integration platform that connects data, systems, and workflows across complex enterprise environments. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Zafin partners with leading financial institutions across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. As AI transforms the future of financial services, we're building the platforms that help regulated organizations adopt AI responsibly and at scale. What’s the Opportunity? The Principal Architect is a senior technical leadership role responsible for defining and maintaining the architectural standards, integration patterns, and technical governance for AI Operating System (AIOS), the AI-native platform, across all client engagements. Your primary goal is to ensure that all squad-level architecture decisions align with enterprise standards, that the platform remains scalable and maintainable at scale, and that reusable capabilities are properly designed and shared across the organization. This position serves as the leading technical authority across the client AI transformations, providing architectural leadership to engagements. It establishes long-term technical direction, influences, enterprise technology decisions, and ensures AIOS implementations remain scalable, secure, and aligned with both client enterprise architecture and Zafin’s. This means the position will be responsible for defining platform-wide architectural standards for agent design, orchestration, retrieval, memory, prompt engineering, evaluation, observability, integration, security, and responsible AI implementation; reviewing and approving complex architectural decisions from squad architects; and leading the evolution of our reusable architecture library. You work horizontally across all squads without direct reporting authority, serving as the escalation point for architecture decisions platform-wide. As a senior technical architect, this position will mentor junior architects and senior engineers on design approaches, ensure consistency across implementations, and balance the need for platform standardization with the practical realities of individual client engagements. The work directly enables faster delivery, higher quality, and greater reuse across all client-facing teams. What Will You Do? Define target-state enterprise architecture for complex AIOS transformations, ensuring alignment between client business strategy, technology landscape, and AI operating model. Define and maintain platform-wide architecture standards for agent design, orchestration, integration patterns, and API design Review and approve squad-level architecture decisions for alignment with enterprise standards and best practices Lead the development, governance, and adoption of reusable reference architectures, implementation patterns, and technical capabilities across client engagements. Partner with Agent Architects and Senior Agent Engineers across client-facing squads to align on design standards and drive adoption of platform patterns Serve as the senior technical advisor to CIOS, Chief Architects, and enterprise technology leaders during client engagements including conducting complex architecture reviews and novel implementations; translate technical standards into client context, and more. Identify architectural patterns emerging in client engagements and translate into reusable reference architectures, and implementation guidance where applicable Develop and maintain security and data governance…