Enterprise AI Architect
About the project
An international client engagement building an enterprise AI capability. You will be the technical lead of a three-person team: yourself plus two Lead AI Solutions Engineers.
About the role
We are looking for an Enterprise AI Architect to own the technical shape of the entire AI capability on the engagement: standards, shared components, and the evaluation and release strategy. You will work directly with the client's leadership (CTO, enterprise architects, senior business stakeholders), select platforms and approaches, and defend those decisions in front of both technical and business audiences. This is a hands-on architecture role with a strong consulting and presales component. You write and review code and personally own the quality of what reaches users.
What you will do
Shape the work
Work with senior business stakeholders and domain experts to define objectives, constraints and expected outcomes
Identify which processes are worth automating and which are not, and say so plainly, including when the answer is no
Select tools, platforms and approaches for each business problem and justify the choice to both technical and business leadership
Shape and present solution proposals: scope, approach, effort, expected impact. Presales is part of the job
Own outcomes with a product mindset: adoption, measurable time saved, and reliability for real users
Own the architecture
Own the technical shape of the whole capability: standards, shared components, evaluation and release strategy, backwards compatibility
Define what a well-formed skill looks like, what belongs in shared infrastructure, and what gets rejected in review
Make and justify platform-level decisions: agent harnesses, integration architecture, build vs adopt
Apply sound judgement on data handling, security and compliance when working with sensitive HR and compensation data
Provide technical leadership to two engineers: review, direction, unblocking
Build it
Design, build, test and maintain reusable AI skills: instructions, supporting scripts, validation logic, reference data, shared components
Write and review production-quality code and own it through review, CI and release
Build the evaluation layer: golden cases, acceptance criteria, regression checks
Debug agent behaviour: establish why a workflow produced the wrong result and fix the root cause
Integrate with the client's platforms and data sources
Drive it forward
Run pilots with real users, collect structured feedback and ship improved versions
Set and enforce standards for how skills are authored, reviewed, versioned and released
Track where AI tooling is heading and bring relevant parts into the engagement before the client asks
What we expect
Architect-level experience with proven ownership of real systems: module boundaries, reuse, versioning, integration, non-functional requirements
Still hands-on: you write and review production code today. This is not a role for pure managers
Strong engineering foundation in at least one modern stack. Our delivery stack is TypeScript / Node.js (NestJS, Angular); fluency is an advantage, not a requirement. Backgrounds in Python, Java or .NET are very welcome
Solid engineering practice: version control, code review, automated testing, CI/CD
Real LLM-backed systems shipped to real users, not just prototypes
Broad hands-on knowledge of the current AI tooling landscape, not tied to a single vendor
Working command of agentic patterns: tool use / function calling, MCP, prompt and context engineering, structured instruction design, orchestration
Experience evaluating and improving non-deterministic systems with test sets and measurable acceptance criteria
Judgement on where AI fits and where conventional software is the better answer
Direct experience with external clients and senior business stakeholders, including CTO-level conversations
Presales experience: shaping, scoping, estimating and pitching solutions to decision-makers
Ability to explain a technical approach and its trade-offs to a non-technical audience
Ability to turn ambiguous requirements and tacit domain knowledge into a clear design and an executable workflow, comfortable working without a full specification
Product mindset: you optimise for user adoption and business outcome, not technical elegance
English C1: you run client conversations unaided
Sustained working-hours overlap with the client (US / Western Europe)
Nice to have
Hands-on experience with Claude Code, especially authoring Skills, plugins or MCP servers
Experience with LLM evaluation tooling (promptfoo, LangSmith, custom harnesses)
Consulting or professional services background
Exposure to HR tech, compensation & benefits, payroll or workforce analytics
Experience building internal developer tooling or standing up a platform capability
Public work: open-source agent tooling, published skills or plugins, conference talks, technical writing on agentic engineering
💼 What we offer
Model: B2B contract with Bonapolia - one contract, one monthly invoice
Rate: negotiated per candidate seniority and client budget
Payment: monthly invoice, paid on the same schedule the client pays us (usually 30 days)
Contract written under your country's law
We handle the client-side paperwork: MSA, NDA, invoicing
🏢 About Bonapolia
Bonapolia is a family-owned IT staff augmentation team based in Lisbon. We build engineering teams for product companies and IT consultancies across Europe and the US.
More at
📩 Ready to Join?
We look forward to receiving your application and welcoming you to our team!
Originally posted on