The appliedAI Initiative elevates Europe’s industry to become shapers in the age of AI creating a future that we desire to live in. Through our ecosystem of strong partners comprehensive programs services and solutions we advance companies holistically on their AI journey. With our uniquely diverse interdisciplinary and driven team we build on deep technical expertise while specializing on applicability of the solutions. We share a mindset of collaboration and openness with our ecosystem of leading companies and tech players. Our common goal is to strengthen the European landscape jointly creating unique knowledge for applying trustworthy AI. We believe that AI Agents will be the dominant topic for AI in the near future and that appliedAI with its partner ecosystem will impact how this technology is being used in industry and beyond in Europe.
Your mission
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—incl. 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.
Your profile
* 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.
What we offer
* 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 you to think and experiment in new ways with software, hardware and processes.
* Hottest topics of the next decade and freedom and trust to initiate your 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.
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