AI Architect

10Pearls is a global, purpose-driven AI-native digital engineering partner that helps businesses reimagine, digitalize, and accelerate their operations. As an end-to-end digital technology partner, 10Pearls creates future-proof, transformative digital products leveraging emerging technologies. Serving Global 2000 enterprises, high-growth mid-size businesses, and innovative startups across industries such as healthcare, fintech, energy, education, real estate, retail, and hi-tech, 10Pearls operates from its headquarters in the Washington DC metro area with product engineering and software development centers across North America, Latin America, Europe, and South Asia.

We are seeking a hands-on AI Architect to design and deliver AI agents and automation solutions within the Microsoft ecosystem. This role involves working with both pro-code and low-code platforms, including Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Power Platform. The ideal candidate will prioritize simplicity and value, choosing the most straightforward solution that meets client needs while applying custom development only when it adds clear benefit. The AI Architect will collaborate directly with client stakeholders, lead technical discovery, and actively contribute to development within a small, agile team.

Key Responsibilities

- Define end-to-end solution architectures for AI agents, document processing, and workflow automation.
- Recommend and configure platform options, including build or buy decisions across Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Platform, and third-party tools.
- Forecast licensing, capacity, and token costs for various use cases, including handling long documents.
- Design single and multi-agent solutions with clearly defined roles, routing, tool usage, and human approval workflows.
- Develop document AI strategies for extraction, parsing, and analysis of long documents such as contracts, incorporating OCR and chunking techniques.
- Collaborate with business analysts and subject matter experts to convert expert knowledge, policies, and SOPs into structured content usable by AI agents.
- Integrate AI solutions with Microsoft 365 applications including Outlook, shared mailboxes, SharePoint, Teams, and Microsoft Graph.
- Assess and design integration with legacy line-of-business systems via APIs, data gateways, or scheduled exports.
- Implement AI security measures addressing prompt injection defense, content safety, access control, audit logging, and data residency.
- Establish evaluation frameworks including datasets, regression suites, confidence thresholds, and accuracy tracking pre- and post-deployment.
- Ensure readiness by confirming licenses, permissions, access, and environment ownership across development stages.
- Participate hands-on in prompt engineering, agent configuration, and coding alongside AI and integration engineers.
- Collaborate with business analysts to assess upcoming use cases while current projects are in progress.
- Communicate technical trade-offs, costs, and risks clearly to both business and technical stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

- Minimum of 8 years in software engineering or solution architecture, with at least 2 years focused on delivering generative AI solutions in production environments.
- Hands-on experience with Azure AI Foundry, including agent development, model selection, and evaluation.
- Practical or strong working knowledge of Copilot Studio and Power Automate.
- Solid understanding of Microsoft 365 ecosystem components such as Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, Microsoft Graph, and Entra ID.
- Familiarity with Microsoft AI licensing models, including Copilot, Copilot Studio capacity, and Azure consumption.
- Experience with document extraction and analysis tools, such as Azure Document Intelligence or equivalents.
- Proficiency with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt design, agent orchestration, and large language model evaluation.
- Awareness of AI security risks including prompt injection and data leakage.
- Python programming skills sufficient for prototyping and code review.
- Experience in client-facing consulting or service delivery roles.
- Ability to work overlapping hours with US Eastern Time zone.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience with contract review, legal technology, or policy-based document verification.
- Background in manufacturing, print, supply chain, or fulfillment operations.
- Integration experience with ERP, MIS, or other legacy operational systems.
- Familiarity with speech-to-text, video, or knowledge capture tools used for training content.
- Relevant Microsoft certifications such as Azure AI Engineer Associate or Azure Solutions Architect Expert.

This role offers the opportunity to work at the forefront of AI innovation within a collaborative and dynamic environment, contributing to impactful digital transformation projects for a diverse range of clients.