Lead Architect - Agentic AI

This is a hands-on leadership role: part lead architect, part product owner, part governance lead. You’ll own the product’s architecture from the ground up while also bringing hands-on experience training Small Language Models (SLMs) and directing a developer focused on that work. You’ll be the technical anchor for the product — setting direction, challenging the roadmap where needed, and ensuring the system is secure, reliable, and built to scale for enterprise customers.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

* Take full ownership of the technical direction of the agentic AI product
* Architect and build the product end-to-end, including designing and directly owning the core database layer, rather than relying on a pre-built or managed data platform
* Build and own the integration layer connecting to third-party enterprise systems, including authentication protocols, webhooks, rate limiting, inconsistent vendor behaviour, and API versioning
* Own the event-driven architecture underpinning the platform’s core workflow and orchestration engine, including queues, workflow orchestration, and idempotency
* Implement enterprise-grade controls — role-based access control, single sign-on, audit logging, tamper-evident record-keeping, and self-hosted/on-premises deployment (Docker/Kubernetes), to meet the product’s data sovereignty requirements
* Embed application security into every layer of the architecture, from code to deployment
* Design the agentic system’s guardrails and safety constraints, manage inference-rate and latency trade-offs, and decide where to use deterministic, rule-based workflows versus AI-driven processes
* Take ownership of the operational reliability of the live system — monitoring, incident response, and ongoing improvement, not just feature delivery
* Establish and enforce governance operations — data handling, model behaviour, access controls, and change management
* Lead a small technical pod, including directing and reviewing the work of a developer focused on training the company’s Small Language Models
* Bring genuine business acumen to technical decisions — balancing customer needs, cost, and delivery timelines
* Manage requirements and delivery through Jira, maintain the codebase in GitHub, and coordinate UI build-out via Loveable
* Produce clear, thorough documentation for architecture, processes, and product decisions
* Act as the primary technical point of contact for leadership and the incoming customer base

QUALIFICATIONS

* Proven, senior-level experience designing, building, and owning production software end-to-end — this is not an entry- or mid-level role
* Track record delivering and operating complete, standalone enterprise applications, rather than building features on top of an existing managed data or ML platform
* Deep, hands-on experience designing and directly operating a relational database layer (Postgres)
* Proven experience building integrations against third-party enterprise systems — covering authentication protocols, webhooks, rate limiting, inconsistent vendor behaviour, and versioning — this is one of the most important differentiators for this role
* Strong background in event-driven systems — queues, workflow orchestration, and idempotency
* Hands-on experience implementing RBAC, SSO, audit logging, tamper-evident record-keeping, and self-hosted/on-premises deployment (Docker/Kubernetes) — essential given the product’s data sovereignty requirements
* A security-first mindset — able to proactively identify and mitigate application security risks, embedding security into every layer of the architecture
* Genuine understanding of the full stack of building an agentic application — guardrails and safety constraints, inference rates and latency trade-offs, and when to use deterministic, rule-based workflows versus AI-driven processes
* Experience with Claude Code, Postgres, and Rust (or a strong typed-language background with a demonstrated ability to ramp up quickly across this stack)
* Genuine, hands-on experience building and operating a production-grade AI or agentic system — including ownership of reliability, monitoring, incident response, and ongoing improvement, rather than experience limited to early-stage prototyping
* Hands-on experience training Small Language Models (SLMs)
* Strong working knowledge of enterprise-class systems: scalability, reliability, and security at production scale
* Track record of leading or mentoring other engineers
* Comfortable challenging specifications and proposing alternative approaches, rather than simply executing requirements as given — able to communicate and debate technical decisions effectively with internal teams and CXOs, not simply agreeing with whatever is asked
* Solid project management skills — able to plan, prioritise, and deliver against timelines with minimal oversight
* Strong documentation habits and excellent written and verbal communication
* Familiarity with GitHub, Jira, and ideally Loveable
* Product-minded: comfortable thinking about the end customer, not just the code