Microsoft · 10 hours ago
Principal AI Architect
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$140K/yr - $275K/yr
6+ years expMicrosoft is a company where passionate innovators come to collaborate, envision what can be, and take their careers further. As a Principal AI Architect, you will define and drive the end-to-end Cloud + AI + Agentic architecture for next-generation skilling experiences and platforms, partnering with engineering and product leadership to deliver secure, reliable, scalable AI systems.
Agentic AIApplication Performance ManagementArtificial Intelligence (AI)Business DevelopmentDevOpsInformation ServicesInformation TechnologyManagement Information SystemsNetwork SecuritySoftware
Responsibilities
Own the reference architecture and technical roadmap for WWL’s AI/Agentic platform capabilities (e.g., orchestration, tools/plugins, memory, retrieval, evaluation, observability, governance)
Translate skilling business objectives into platform investments and architectural decisions, balancing speed-to-value with security, compliance, cost, and long-term maintainability
Establish clear architectural guardrails and decision frameworks (e.g., “build vs. buy,” “Copilot Studio vs. Foundry,” “RAG vs. fine-tune,” “central vs. federated patterns”)
Lead architecture/design reviews for major initiatives; drive alignment on system boundaries, contracts, dependency management, and resiliency
Define and standardize architecture patterns (multi-tenant SaaS, event-driven architectures, secure data access, model routing, agent safety controls)
Create reusable templates, “golden paths,” and reference implementations to accelerate engineering delivery across teams and reduce fragmentation
Embed Responsible AI principles into agentic solution design (human-in-the-loop, safety mitigations, evaluation, transparency, and auditability)
Partner with security and compliance stakeholders to ensure services meet required controls and operational standards, and to drive alignment between policy intent and implementation
Define secure patterns for prompt/data handling, secrets management, identity, and access governance for AI systems
Drive architecture that improves reliability, observability, incident response readiness, and cost efficiency across AI-enabled services
Establish telemetry standards (quality, safety, latency, cost, success metrics) and ensure teams instrument consistently to enable operational excellence at scale
Design for production: rollout/rollback strategies, evaluation gates, and operational playbooks for AI/agent releases
Build coalitions across WWL and broader Microsoft engineering/product groups to deliver complex, large-scale initiatives; resolve long-standing misalignments; and hold stakeholders accountable for commitments
Act as a trusted technical advisor to senior stakeholders, creating clarity, driving alignment, and enabling execution across multiple teams and disciplines
Mentor engineers; enhance architecture quality, engineering discipline, and Responsible AI rigor
Contribute to internal technical communities through documentation, brown bags, and reusable engineering guidance—amplifying impact through others
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience
Preferred
Master's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience
10+ experience in software engineering or solution architecture, with demonstrable success building and operating complex systems
10+ experience designing, implementing, and optimizing AI solutions encompassing data pipelines, model training and serving, and production MLOps
10+ years of full-stack development across frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure, with a proficient command of data engineering, AI/ML systems, and deployment architectures
2+ project experience with NLP and LLM-based systems
Proficient coding skills in C#, Python, JavaScript, and React
Proven experience designing and shipping AI/ML GenAI solutions, including one or more of: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), enterprise search, vector retrieval, LLM orchestration and agentic workflows, AI evaluation/monitoring, safety and quality measurement
Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering cloud-native, distributed systems at scale (multi-service systems, reliability, performance, and operability)
Proficient engineering fundamentals and ability to work 'hands-on when needed' (prototyping/reference implementations, architectural spike investigations, debugging complex issues)
Track record of cross-team influence—driving alignment and execution across multiple disciplines and stakeholders
Ability to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences; comfort presenting senior leadership
Company
Microsoft
Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Microsoft has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
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Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (9192)
2024 (9343)
2023 (7677)
2022 (11403)
2021 (7210)
2020 (7852)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$1MKey Investors
Technology Venture Investors
2022-12-09Post Ipo Equity
1986-03-13IPO
1981-09-01Series Unknown· $1M
Leadership Team
Satya Nadella
Chairman and CEO
Vukani Mngxati
Chief Executive Officer - Microsft South Africa
Recent News
2026-01-16
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2026-01-16
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