Azure AI Foundry Architect (Remote)

Role Overview

We are seeking a highly skilled Azure AI Foundry Architect to design, build, and scale enterprise‑grade AI solutions using Microsoft’s Azure AI ecosystem. This role requires a hands‑on technical leader with deep expertise in agentic AI architectures, orchestration frameworks, and cloud‑native engineering. You will drive the end‑to‑end AI solution lifecycle—from experimentation to production—ensuring secure, scalable, and responsible AI adoption across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

AI Architecture & Solution Design

• Architect and hands‑on develop end‑to‑end AI solutions using Azure AI Foundry, including model lifecycle management, prompt orchestration, vector search, and evaluation pipelines.
• Design and implement agentic AI architectures, including multi‑agent workflows, tool‑use patterns, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), and autonomous task‑orchestration frameworks.
• Build scalable, production‑ready solutions leveraging Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Search, AKS, Azure Functions, Event Grid, and API Management.
• Create architectural blueprints, reusable components, and reference implementations.

Agentic Systems & Orchestration

• Hands‑on development of AI agents capable of reasoning, planning, tool invocation, and multi‑step task execution.
• Implement and optimize orchestration frameworks such as Semantic Kernel, LangChain, AutoGen, Prompt Flow, or custom agent frameworks within Azure environments.
• Apply Azure’s responsible AI tooling, guardrails, and governance controls to ensure safe and aligned agent behavior.

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Lead technical discovery, solution workshops, and architecture reviews with engineering, data science, and product teams.
• Translate business requirements into actionable, scalable AI architectures and implementation roadmaps.
• Oversee and contribute to CI/CD automation, MLOps pipelines, and deployment workflows for AI workloads.
• Provide hands‑on guidance during development, testing, optimization, and production rollout.

Governance, Security & Compliance

• Implement enterprise‑grade security patterns including identity, data protection, network isolation, and model governance.
• Ensure compliance with organizational, regulatory, and responsible AI standards.
• Establish monitoring, observability, and evaluation frameworks for model performance, drift, and safety.

Innovation & Thought Leadership

• Stay current with emerging AI technologies, agentic frameworks, and Azure AI platform capabilities.
• Advise leadership on AI strategy, platform evolution, and opportunities for automation and transformation.
• Mentor engineering teams on AI best practices, architectural principles, and modern development patterns.

Required Qualifications

Technical Expertise

• 8+ years in software architecture or cloud engineering, with at least 3+ years focused on AI/ML solutions.
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience building and deploying solutions using Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Search, and Azure Data services.
• Strong proficiency in Python, with additional experience in C#, .NET, or Java preferred.
• Proven experience designing and building agentic AI systems, including multi‑agent orchestration, tool‑use, planning, and autonomous workflows.
• Expertise with frameworks such as Semantic Kernel, LangChain, AutoGen, Prompt Flow, or similar.
• Strong understanding of RAG architectures, embeddings, vector databases, and LLM optimization techniques.

Architecture & Cloud Skills

• Deep experience with cloud‑native architecture, microservices, APIs, event‑driven systems, and distributed computing.
• Hands‑on experience with DevOps/MLOps, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and AKS.
• Familiarity with enterprise security, identity (Azure AD), and governance frameworks.

Soft Skills & Leadership

• Excellent communication and stakeholder‑management abilities.
• Ability to lead cross‑functional teams and drive architectural decisions.
• Strong problem‑solving mindset with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Azure certifications (e.g., Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure AI Engineer Associate, Azure Data Engineer Associate).
• Experience with responsible AI frameworks, model evaluation, and safety guardrails.
• Background in large‑scale digital transformation or enterprise AI platform design.

Cognizant will only consider applicants for this position who are legally authorized to work in the United States without requiring company sponsorship now or at any time in the future.