Enterprise Architect

Job Description

AI Enterprise Architect – Contract position based out of Lincolnshire, IL.

Compensation : $90.00 - $110.00/hr. Individual compensation will vary based on qualifications, skills, experience, job knowledge, geographic location, internal equity, and other pertinent job‑related factors.

Benefits :

• Medical, dental & vision
• Critical Illness, Accident, and Hospital
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Pre‑tax and Roth post‑tax contributions available
• Life Insurance (Voluntary Life & AD&D for the employee and dependents)
• Short and long‑term disability
• Health Spending Account (HSA)
• Transportation benefits
• Employee Assistance Program
• Time Off/Leave (PTO, Vacation or Sick Leave)

Eligibility requirements :

• Eligibility requirements apply to some benefits and may depend on your job classification and length of employment.

Location : Lincolnshire, IL – fully onsite.

Working Hours : Contract position.

Application Deadline : This position is anticipated to close on Aug 26, 2026.

Key Responsibilities :

• Define and maintain the enterprise AI target architecture, transition architectures, capability model, platform strategy, and multiyear architecture roadmap.
• Translate business strategy and operating priorities into executable AI capabilities, architecture investments, and delivery sequences.
• Establish the architectural direction for generative AI, agentic AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, AI‑assisted decision‑making, and AI‑enabled business processes.
• Define clear boundaries and relationships between enterprise AI platforms, domain solutions, shared services, data platforms, enterprise applications, and external AI providers.
• Ensure that project‑level AI decisions support enterprise scalability, interoperability, security, reuse, and long‑term maintainability.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate overlapping technologies, eliminate duplicated capabilities, and prevent uncontrolled AI platform and vendor sprawl.
• Develop architecture options and recommendations that explicitly address business value, delivery speed, cost, risk, technical debt, vendor dependency, and operational complexity.
• Maintain a current enterprise view of AI capabilities, platforms, models, agents, integrations, data dependencies, vendors, risks, and strategic initiatives.
• Lead AI initiatives from problem definition and architecture through implementation, production deployment, adoption, and measurable outcomes.
• Develop working prototypes and reference implementations to validate architecture decisions, platform capabilities, integration approaches, security controls, and delivery feasibility.
• Review source code, prompts, agent definitions, tool configurations, retrieval pipelines, model configurations, APIs, infrastructure, and deployment pipelines as needed to validate solution quality.
• Work directly with engineering teams to resolve architecture and implementation issues rather than limiting involvement to reviews or recommendations.
• Rapidly diagnose delivery blockers, simplify overengineered approaches, reduce unnecessary scope, and establish practical paths to production.
• Define production‑readiness criteria and ensure that AI solutions meet requirements for reliability, security, performance, observability, supportability, cost, and business continuity.
• Distinguish clearly between proof of concept, pilot, minimum viable product, production capability, and enterprise platform.
• Remain personally accountable for architecture outcomes, not only architecture artifacts or review completion.
• Design enterprise‑grade architectures for large language models, multimodal models, AI assistants, autonomous and semi‑autonomous agents, and AI‑enabled applications.
• Define patterns for single‑agent and multi‑agent orchestration, tool use, planning, reasoning, memory, state management, delegation, and human approval.
• Establish architecture standards for retrieval‑augmented generation, structured retrieval, knowledge graphs, semantic search, and enterprise knowledge access.
• Define patterns for context engineering, prompt management, structured outputs, model routing, fallback, caching, and workload segmentation.
• Architect secure agent access to enterprise systems, APIs, data, workflows, and external services.
• Define patterns for Model Context Protocol, agent‑to‑agent communication, enterprise APIs, event‑driven interactions, and tool integration.

Requirements :

• Expert Level – 10+ years of progressive experience in enterprise, solution, application, infrastructure, security architecture, or related technology roles.
• Experience developing enterprise roadmaps, target‑state architectures, and cross‑domain solution designs.
• Strong knowledge of application portfolios, distributed systems, cloud platforms, APIs, event‑driven architecture, integration, and modern software engineering.
• Hands‑on architecture experience across applications, data, infrastructure, cloud, and security domains.
• Experience with AI, machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI in enterprise environments.
• Strong understanding of AI security, including governance, model security, prompt security, data protection, identity and access, and operational controls.
• Knowledge of security frameworks, risk management, and regulatory requirements relevant to AI adoption.
• Experience evaluating technology platforms, vendors, and emerging technologies.
• Deep understanding of SDLC, architecture methods, and enterprise architecture frameworks.
• Strong analytical, communication, stakeholder management, and influence skills.

Preferred Qualifications :

• Experience in financial services, insurance, or other regulated industries.
• Experience with Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic, agent frameworks, AI gateways, vector databases, or AI governance platforms.
• Familiarity with secure AI development, AI threat modeling, model risk management, and responsible AI frameworks.
• Relevant enterprise architecture, cloud, cybersecurity, or AI certifications such as TOGAF, SABSA, CISSP, GCP Cloud Architect, or similar.

Equal Opportunity Employer : The company is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regard to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.

Employment Type : Contract.

Workplace Type : Fully remote.