As a Principal Software Architect focused on AI Architecture in Professional Services, you define reference architectures, govern standards across programs, and lead high-impact transformations with enterprise clients. You combine strategic architecture with hands-on depth to deliver robust, scalable, and compliant AI systems at scale.
Your responsibilities will include:

• Define architectural vision and strategy for multi-team delivery of complex AI-enabled software systems, ensuring coherence, scalability, and technical excellence
• Lead discovery, design, and critical solutioning workshops, setting reference architectures, standards, templates, and best practices across engagements
• Architect LLM/ML platforms (serving, retrieval/RAG, evaluation, guardrails) and the MLOps backbone (registries, CI/CD, rollout/rollback). Engineer for SLOs/SLAs, resilience, security, and cost efficiency across cloud and on-prem deployments
• Set and enforce standards for architecture design, code quality, observability, security, data governance, and compliance—including EU AI Act implications
• Mentor and guide engineering teams and clients, providing technical leadership during spikes, de-risking activities, and key decision points
• Partner with sales and delivery leadership in pre-sales, scoping, estimations, proposals, and stakeholder alignment, representing technical vision to clients and business leaders

• 12+ years designing and operating large-scale, production-grade systems; 5+ years in consulting/professional services
• Proven experience technically leading large projects and customer engagements with measurable outcomes
• Expert-level software architecture fundamentals (distributed systems, data/messaging, API design) and cloud-native platforms (Docker/Kubernetes, Terraform/Pulumi, CI/CD)
• MLOps and LLM platform architecture (vLLM/Triton/ONNX; MLflow/W&B; monitoring/drift; evaluation frameworks; safety/guardrails)
• Security, privacy, and governance by design (SSO/IAM, secrets, audit logging, data residency/compliance; EU AI Act awareness)
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management from engineering to C-level; strong documentation practices
• Fluent English, fluent German is a plus

• A highly qualified and motivated team of ~90 people on a journey to change the rapidly evolving European AI Landscape. 
• Experience the best of both worlds with our hybrid work model: You can choose to work from our vibrant offices - either at the IPAI in Heilbronn or the House of Communication in Munich - while also enjoying the flexibility to work remotely a few days each week
• Opportunity to shape a variety of projects and the development of new, original content based on the latest developments in AI and its adoption in businesses
• An atmosphere that encourages to think and experiment in new ways with software, hardware, and processes
• Hottest topics of the next decade and freedom and trust to initiate own activities
• A highly visible initiative that helps you build a large and high-level network of start-ups, partners, and tech companies
• Sports membership with Wellpass to access thousands of sports facilities all over Germany (and beyond)
• JobRad leasing option
• You can take a sabbatical of up to 3 months after 3 years of employment - because sometimes 30 vacation days are not enough to explore the beauty of this world.

Lucas Fernandes - Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist
appliedAI Initiative GmbH, August-Everding-Str. 25, 81671 München