Chief Architect

ClearEdge

$150K — $180K *
Information Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Active TS/SCI with Polygraph clearance; U.S. citizenship
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or similar (or 4 years of equivalent experience)
  • 15+ years of IT experience
  • Proficient in Generative AI technologies and concepts, including frontier LLMs and agentic architectures
  • Experience with hybrid and air-gapped system deployments
  • Comprehensive knowledge of the full software development lifecycle
  • Strong communication skills for technical briefings and presentations

Responsibilities

  • Own and define the architecture vision for the assigned AI product
  • Lead the development and evaluation of proofs of concept and prototypes
  • Conduct technical trade-off analyses and make implementation decisions
  • Create functional design documents and oversee platform installation and integration
  • Mentor engineering teams, including those embedded with customers
  • Support business development through whitepapers, proposals, and customer briefings
  • Deliver technical presentations to internal and external stakeholders

Benefits

  • Work within a cutting-edge AI environment
  • Opportunity to lead and influence architectural decisions
  • Access to mentorship and professional development
  • Collaboration with diverse engineering teams
  • Engagement with leadership and clients on technical direction
Full Job Description
Your Mission

Join ClearEdge as a Chief Architect, where you will set the technical direction and architecture for one of our core AI-enabled products, supporting deployment across multiple customer environments, including hybrid and air-gapped networks. You will lead architectural decisions for workflow, compliance, and dashboard capabilities, working across engineering teams to keep the platform modular, secure, and extensible as it scales to new customers.

This role includes prototyping new AI capabilities using frontier LLMs and agentic architectures, leading multi-team technical efforts, and representing the platform's capabilities to leadership and prospective customers.

You Will Excel in This Role If You Are:

  • Experienced leading architecture for complex, multi-team software efforts
  • Fluent in AI-native development: frontier LLMs, agentic architectures, RAG and vector stores
  • Skilled in full-stack, layered system design, including hybrid and air-gapped deployment
  • Comfortable prototyping and evaluating new technical approaches
  • Capable of translating business objectives into durable architectural decisions
  • Experienced mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership across teams
  • Confident presenting technical direction to leadership, prospects, and customers
  • Skilled at balancing customer-specific requests with the platform's long-term direction


A Day in the Life:

  • Own architecture vision for an assigned product, scaling it across current and future customer engagements
  • Lead proofs of concept and prototypes evaluating new technologies
  • Perform technical trade-off analysis and implementation decisions across teams
  • Produce functional design documents; support installation and integration of the platform baseline
  • Mentor engineers, including leads embedded in specific customer implementations
  • Support business development: whitepaper authoring, customer briefings, proposals
  • Deliver technical briefings and presentations to internal and external leadership


What We Are Expecting From You:

  • Active TS/SCI with Polygraph clearance; U.S. citizenship
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or similar (4 years of experience may substitute)
  • 15+ years of IT experience
  • Experience with Generative AI: frontier LLMs, AI-native IDEs, RAG and vector stores, agentic AI principles (orchestration, sub-agents, agent protocols)
  • Experience deploying complex systems across hybrid and air-gapped environments
  • Experience across the full software development lifecycle
  • Strong written and oral communication skills, including briefings for internal and external leadership


Nice to Have:

  • Experience supporting RMF/ATO in a classified DoD or IC environment
  • Experience owning a COTS platform serving multiple customer accounts
  • Experience with physical security or facility accreditation practices, such as ICD 705 or similar frameworks
  • Familiarity with tools used by security and compliance teams

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at ClearEdge

More Information Technology Jobs

Find similar Chief Architect jobs: