Your role and responsibilities
As an Application Architect for AI Integration, this role is responsible for designing and governing end-to-end architectures that embed AI capabilities into enterprise applications and workflows. The Application Architect collaborates with stakeholders to translate business objectives into scalable designs, balancing vendor-managed services with custom development, and drives governance for AI integration.
Your primary responsibilities will include:
• Designing Architectures: defining reference patterns for AI services, models, and orchestration layers to integrate seamlessly with existing systems, APIs, and data platforms.
• Collaborating with Stakeholders: translating business objectives into scalable, resilient, and policy-compliant designs, ensuring performance, security, compliance, and cost objectives are met.
• Governing AI Integration: driving governance for prompts, guardrails, and lifecycle management, ensuring observability, privacy, and responsible AI principles are embedded from design through operations.
Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
Core Architecture
- 12+ years of enterprise application architecture experience, with at least 3 years in a lead or principal architect role owning cross-domain target-state design
- Proven experience defining microservices, event-driven (Kafka/SQS/EventBridge), and API-first architectures at scale - including versioning, lifecycle governance, and breaking-change management
- AWS cloud architecture (Solutions Architect Professional or equivalent depth) - EKS, RDS/Aurora, API Gateway, Lambda, SQS/SNS, MSK, and AI/ML services (Bedrock, SageMaker)
- Data architecture experience - OLTP/OLAP separation, CDC patterns, data domain ownership, master data management, and real-time vs. batch pipeline design
AI & Agentic Architecture
- Hands-on architecture experience designing systems that embed AI capabilities - RAG pipelines, LLM orchestration (LangChain, LlamaIndex, or equivalent), and agentic workflow patterns
- Experience integrating AI/ML models into production enterprise systems - not just proof-of-concept - including model serving, prompt governance, output guardrails, and cost/latency management
- Familiarity with AI governance frameworks - responsible AI principles, explainability requirements, audit trails for AI-assisted decisions - particularly in regulated industries
- Experience evaluating and selecting AI services (managed APIs vs. self-hosted models) based on data privacy, compliance, and total cost of ownership constraints
Domain & Regulatory
- Financial services or insurance domain experience - understanding of policy lifecycle, commission structures, agent licensing, or carrier integration is strongly preferred
- Experience designing systems that operate under regulatory frameworks - FINRA, FSRA, SOC 2, GLBA, CCPA, or equivalent - with audit logging, data retention, and access control as first-class architecture concerns
Technical Leadership
- Demonstrated ability to drive architecture decisions through ambiguity - producing clear documentation, facilitating design reviews, and building consensus across engineering and business stakeholders
- Experience working in Agile/scaled delivery environments - integrating architecture practice into sprint cadence without becoming a bottleneck
- Track record of mentoring senior engineers and establishing architecture standards that teams adopt and maintain
Preferred technical and professional experience
- Experience with agent/broker distribution platforms, MLM commission hierarchies, or multi-carrier insurance marketplaces
- Familiarity with ACORD standards, NIPR/Sircon integrations, or DTCC financial messaging
- Experience with Valkey/Redis, Kafka, or distributed caching architecture in high-availability Kubernetes environments
- Prior experience in a consultancy or systems integrator context - ability to operate as a trusted advisor alongside a client engineering team
OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS
IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:
- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences
This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.
IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.
The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.
