AI Architect

Location: Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, Wellington, Wellington Region, New Zealand, Christchurch, Canterbury Region, New Zealand, Hamilton, Waikato Region, New Zealand, Tauranga, Bay of Plenty Region, New Zealand

Department: New Zealand Market, Professional Services, Digital Engineering

Workplace: hybrid

Employment Type: full

Description

Our purpose

Here at Datacom we connect people and technology in order to solve challenges, create opportunities and discover new possibilities for the communities we live in.

About the Role (your why)

The way we work and our customer needs are changing! We are going through a significant AI uplift that will be a real game changer in the ANZ Market. Our customers are loving our story and excited about our new service solutions.

We are looking for a AI Architect to define and drive the technical vision for our AI-powered solutions. In this role, you will be the key technical authority responsible for designing end-to-end AI architectures that are scalable, secure, and production-ready. You will bridge the gap between business strategy and technical execution — translating complex requirements into robust architectural blueprints that leverage modern cloud platforms, large language models, and agentic AI patterns.

Your deep software engineering background combined with hands-on AI expertise will be critical. You will guide engineering teams, evaluate and select technologies, establish architectural standards, and ensure our AI solutions are built on solid foundations. You will join our Digital Engineering leadership team, working across multiple workstreams to shape the future of AI-driven solutions at Datacom.

We need exceptional architects who can think strategically and execute tactically — if you want to put an ANZ company on the global AI map, this is your moment!

What You’ll Do

You will own the end-to-end technical architecture for AI-powered solutions across multiple customer engagements, evaluating, selecting, and standardizing AI technologies, frameworks, and platforms for the organization.

You will create reference architectures, design patterns, and best practices for AI solution delivery; lead architectural reviews and provide technical governance across delivery teams; and collaborate with product owners, data scientists, and engineering leads to translate business requirements into scalable technical designs.

You will design data architectures that support AI workloads—ingestion, processing, storage, and retrieval—establish and champion engineering standards for AI quality, testing, security, and observability, and guide build-vs-buy decisions while managing vendor/partner technology relationships.

You will mentor and uplift engineering teams in AI architecture and best practices, stay current with the rapidly evolving AI landscape to bring actionable insights to the organization, and present architectural visions and technical strategies to senior stakeholders and customers.

What You'll Bring

AI

• Expertise in agentic AI and multi-agent orchestration (tools, planning, reflection, chain-of-thought)
• Build AI evaluation frameworks with metrics, benchmarks, and QA for non-deterministic systems
• Proficiency in prompt engineering, management, and security (injection prevention, guardrails)
• Ensure reliable model serving, GPU optimization, and cost-aware inference

Solution Architecture

• Design end-to-end solutions across frontend, backend, data, and AI layers
• Create architectural decision records, reference architectures, and technical design documents
• Master distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices
• Develop AI data architecture (modeling, pipelines, governance)
• Design API patterns (REST, GraphQL, gRPC) for robust AI service integration
• Address security with threat modeling, responsible AI, data privacy, and compliance

Cloud Platforms & Infra

• Maintain expert-level Azure/AWS/GCP cloud architectures
• Leverage AI managed services (Bedrock, SageMaker, Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI)
• Use serverless and container patterns (ECS/EKS, Cloud Run, Lambda)
• Build vector/search infrastructure (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, OpenSearch)
• Apply Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK, Pulumi) and GitOps
• Focus on AI FinOps and cost optimization

Programming & Technical Depth

• Excel in Python for prototyping, review, and critical decisions
• Use TypeScript/JavaScript for full-stack design
• Employ AI frameworks (Semantic Kernel, AgentCore, etc)
• Ensure AI observability—tracing, logging, monitoring, and drift detection

Leadership & Communication

• Lead technical teams and mentor engineers
• Communicate complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Run architecture reviews, design workshops, and governance

Why join us here at Datacom?

Datacom is one of Australia and New Zealand's largest suppliers of Information Technology professional services. We have managed to maintain a dynamic, agile, small business feel that is often diluted in larger organisations of our size. It's our people that give Datacom its unique culture and energy that you can feel from the moment you meet with us.

We care about our people and provide a range of perks such as social events, chill-out spaces, remote working, flexi-hours and professional development courses to name a few. You'll have the opportunity to learn, develop your career, connect and bring your true self to work. You will be recognised and valued for your contributions and be able to do your work in a collegial, flat-structured environment.

We operate at the forefront of technology to help Australia and New Zealand's largest enterprise organisations explore possibilities and solve their greatest challenges, so you will never run out of interesting new challenges and opportunities.

We want Datacom to be an inclusive and welcoming workplace for everyone and take pride in the steps we have taken and continue to take to make our environment fun and friendly, and our people feel supported.