AI and Software Solutions Architect (Remote, Contract)

Role overview

A remote contracting organisation is hiring an AI and Software Solutions Architect to lead architectural direction across a large product portfolio spanning more than 500 repositories, including backend services, LLM-based products, and legacy systems. This is a senior individual contributor role reporting into technology leadership, focused on reviewing solutions, setting engineering standards, and shaping modernisation efforts rather than direct people management. The architect will pair technical judgement with clear communication to influence decisions across distributed engineering teams.

Responsibilities

- Translate business needs into architectural decisions, articulating trade-offs, costs, and risks while balancing quality with delivery priorities. - Review code, architecture, and vendor deliverables, producing concise findings and verifying that critical issues are resolved. - Establish shared standards covering security, documentation, service contracts, and observability, and support teams in adopting them. - Define guardrails for production LLM and agentic systems, including evaluation, prompt management, model routing, multi-provider access, security, and cost control. - Guide legacy modernisation through application decomposition, authorisation upgrades, workflow migration, and safe transition planning. - Partner with engineering on deployment workflows, Kubernetes adoption, observability improvements, and diagnosing architectural bottlenecks; build prototypes and contribute to technical hiring.

Requirements

- 5+ years in software engineering with 3+ years owning architectural decisions for production systems as an architect, principal engineer, or technical lead. - Strong computer science fundamentals for distributed, high-load systems, including reliability, failure handling, and observability. - Hands-on AWS production experience plus practical Kubernetes collaboration with DevOps teams. - Track record delivering production LLM solutions covering design through operation, including RAG, tool calling, multi-provider integration, and cost optimisation. - Experience evaluating LLM systems for quality, latency, and cost using tooling such as Langfuse or comparable platforms. - Substantial Python or Node.js background, flexibility across stacks including legacy PHP, plus PostgreSQL/NoSQL and event-driven experience with Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar.

Nice to have

- AIOps exposure such as anomaly detection, alert correlation, and incident triage. - Classical ML judgement, MLOps experience, and familiarity with Backstage. - SSO migrations involving Keycloak or Azure AD, and vendor delivery audits. - Relevant certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect – Professional.

Benefits and work setup

- Fully remote engagement with a Monday–Friday schedule, 13:00–21:00 EEST including breaks. - Monthly contractor payments in USD, long-term B2B collaboration, and paid sick leave, vacation, and public holidays. - Reduced-hour Fridays during summer and access to premium AI tools and subscriptions.