Description

POSITION DESCRIPTION :

We are looking for an AI Solutions Architect to join our Grid & Energy Services team and help define the next generation of intelligent energy products across our platform ecosystem. This role will focus on building the agentic AI foundation that development teams will use to deliver advanced AI-driven capabilities across energy management, DER, VPP, solar, and data center solutions.

As an AI Solutions Architect, you will design and scale the foundational framework for how AI agents are authored, orchestrated, evaluated, governed, and operated across the organization, with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry at the center of the stack. You will create reusable patterns, shared services, and developer-facing abstractions that enable application teams to rapidly build production-grade AI solutions.

This is a high-impact role at the intersection of AI architecture, cloud platforms, and developer enablement. You will partner closely with engineering, product, infrastructure, and security teams to build scalable, secure, and developer-friendly AI systems that accelerate innovation across our intelligent energy platform portfolio.

LOCATION & WORK ARRANGEMENT

This role is remote initially; however the candidate(s) will be expected to relocate at their own expense to our onsite Houston location by Q1 in 2027*

*Q1 2027 is an approximate timeframe and is subject to change at any time

RESPONSIBILITIES

Architect and build the company's agentic AI framework on Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, including the reference architecture, reusable SDKs, templates, and shared services that enable teams to rapidly develop and deploy AI-driven applications.
Define the core patterns and capabilities for agent development, including tool integration, function calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), memory, planning workflows, multi-agent orchestration, and human-in-the-loop interactions.
Own the foundational platform services shared across all AI agents, including model routing, prompt and policy management, observability, tracing, evaluation frameworks, content safety, and cost optimization.
Evaluate and integrate Azure AI Foundry services and supporting tech such as Foundry Agent Service, AI Search, Prompt Flow, and AutoGen into a scalable AI platform.
Partner closely with engineering and application teams to guide agent design reviews, solve complex integration challenges, and drive adoption across the organization.
Create and maintain reference architectures, golden-path templates, and engineering standards for production-grade AI agents with a focus on grounding, evaluation, guardrails, reliability, and safe autonomy.
Drive responsible AI and governance standards across the platform, including testing strategies, monitoring, red-team exercises, operational controls, and rollback mechanisms for agent behavior and model performance.
Develop technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and internal enablement materials while mentoring engineers on agentic AI principles, platform standards, and applied AI engineering best practices.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

8+ years of experience in software architecture, platform engineering, or senior technical leadership roles, including recent hands-on experience building and deploying production AI or agentic systems.
Expertise designing and operating enterprise-scale solutions on microsoft azure, including compute, networking, identity mgmt, security, data platforms and cost optimization.
Strong understanding of modern cloud-native architecture patterns including microservices, event-driven systems, API-first development, infrastructure as code (Bicep/Terraform), CI/CD pipelines, and Azure Well-Architected Framework principles.
Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and related technologies including Azure OpenAI, Foundry Agent Service, AI Search, Prompt Flow, evaluation frameworks, and content safety capabilities.
Proven experience designing and implementing agentic AI architectures including multi-agent orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool and function calling, memory management, planning, and human-in-the-loop workflows.
Familiarity with modern AI orchestration frameworks and protocols such as Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, LangGraph, and Model Context Protocol (MCP), including an understanding of where and how each is best applied.
Experience building developer platforms, reusable frameworks, SDKs, or internal enablement tooling with a strong focus on scalability, usability, and developer adoption.
Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineering teams, leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders, while promoting responsible AI practices including governance, observability, evaluations, and operational safeguards.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
• Contributions to open-source AI, agentic orchestration, or MCP-related projects.
• Experience operating large-scale LLM systems, including performance optimization, prompt management, caching, model fallback strategies, and production incident response.
• Understanding of model fine-tuning, evaluation, and optimization techniques, with the ability to determine when tuning is more effective than prompting or retrieval approaches.
• Experience with edge AI, hybrid cloud deployments, or localized inference environments such as Foundry Local.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI governance and compliance frameworks including NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and emerging AI regulatory standards.
• Technical community involvement through published content, conference speaking, open-source contributions, or other thought leadership in applied AI.
• Ability to travel 10% or as needed.

PHYSICAL, MENTAL & ENVIRONMENTAL DEMANDS:

To comply with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 the essential physical, mental and environmental requirements for this job are listed below. These are requirements normally expected to perform regular job duties. Incumbent must be able to successfully perform all of the functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

Mobility

Standing

20% of time

Sitting

70% of time

Walking

10% of time

Strength

Pulling

up to 10 Pounds

Pushing

up to 10 Pounds

Carrying

up to 10 Pounds

Lifting

up to 10 Pounds

Dexterity (F = Frequently, O = Occasionally, N = Never)

Typing

F

Handling

F

Reaching

F

Agility (F = Frequently, O = Occasionally, N = Never)

Turning

F

Twisting

F

Bending

O

Crouching

O

Balancing

N

Climbing

N

Crawling

N

Kneeling

N

The salary range is required by the California Pay Transparency Act and may differ depending on the location of those candidates hired nationwide. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to, skill set, education, licenses and certifications, essential job duties and requirements, and the necessary experience relative to the job's minimum qualifications.

*This target salary range is for CA positions only and should not be interpreted as an offer of compensation.
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