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 a diverse clientele that includes Global 2000 enterprises, high-growth mid-size businesses, and innovative start-ups across industries such as healthcare, fintech, energy, education, real estate, retail, and hi-tech, the company is headquartered in the Washington DC metro area with engineering 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 efficiency, opting for the most straightforward solution that meets client needs, while applying custom development only when it adds clear value. The AI Architect will collaborate closely with client stakeholders, lead technical discovery phases, and actively contribute to the build process within a small, agile team.

Key Responsibilities

- Define end-to-end solution architectures for AI agents, document processing, and workflow automation.
- Recommend and evaluate platform options, including configuring, building, or buying solutions across Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Power Platform, and third-party tools.
- Forecast licensing, capacity, and token costs for each use case, including handling long documents.
- Design single and multi-agent systems with clearly defined roles, routing mechanisms, 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 such as Outlook, shared mailboxes, SharePoint, Teams, and Microsoft Graph.
- Assess and design integration approaches for legacy line-of-business systems through APIs, data gateways, or scheduled exports.
- Ensure AI security by designing defenses against prompt injection, securing files and content, managing access control, audit logging, and data residency compliance.
- Establish evaluation frameworks including datasets, regression suites, confidence thresholds, and accuracy tracking before and after deployment.
- Confirm readiness by verifying licenses, permissions, access, and environment ownership across development stages prior to build commencement.
- Participate hands-on in prompt engineering, agent configuration, and coding alongside AI and integration engineers.
- Collaborate with business analysts to prepare for upcoming use cases while current projects are underway.
- Communicate clearly with business and technical stakeholders, explaining trade-offs, costs, and risks in accessible language.

Required Qualifications

- Minimum of 8 years in software engineering or solution architecture, with at least 2 years delivering generative AI solutions in production environments.
- Hands-on experience with Azure AI Foundry, including agent development, model selection, and evaluation.
- Practical experience 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 like 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 in contract review, legal technology, or policy-based document verification.
- Background in manufacturing, print, supply chain, or fulfillment operations.
- Familiarity with integrating ERP, MIS, or other legacy operational systems.
- Experience with speech-to-text, video, or knowledge capture tools 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 dynamic, global organization committed to delivering impactful digital transformation solutions.