AI Architect

About the company

Datacom brings people and technology together to solve problems, open up opportunities, and help the communities it serves discover new possibilities.

About the role

The company is undergoing a major uplift in AI capabilities across the ANZ market, and customer demand for its new AI-enabled service offerings is growing quickly. As an AI Architect, you will shape the technical direction for AI-powered solutions and act as the primary authority on architecture. Your work will focus on building scalable, secure, and production-ready systems that connect business goals with practical technical design.

You will use your software engineering depth and applied AI experience to guide teams, assess technologies, define standards, and make sure solutions are built on strong architectural foundations. This role sits within the Digital Engineering leadership group and contributes across multiple workstreams to influence Datacom’s AI future.

What you will do

• Take ownership of the end-to-end architecture for AI solutions across several client engagements.
• Evaluate, select, and standardise the organisation’s AI tools, frameworks, and platforms.
• Develop reference architectures, reusable design patterns, and delivery best practices for AI initiatives.
• Lead architecture assessments and provide technical oversight to delivery teams.
• Work closely with product owners, data scientists, and engineering leaders to turn business needs into scalable technical designs.
• Design data architectures that support AI use cases, including ingestion, processing, storage, and retrieval.
• Set and promote engineering standards for AI quality, testing, security, and observability.
• Support build-versus-buy decisions and manage relationships with vendors and technology partners.
• Coach and develop engineering teams on AI architecture and modern delivery practices.
• Stay up to date with fast-moving AI trends and turn that knowledge into practical guidance for the business.
• Present architectural direction and technical strategy to senior leaders and customers.

What you will bring

• Strong capability in agentic AI and multi-agent orchestration, including tools, planning, reflection, and chain-of-thought approaches.
• Experience creating AI evaluation frameworks with metrics, benchmarks, and QA methods for non-deterministic systems.
• Hands-on knowledge of prompt engineering, prompt management, and prompt security controls such as injection protection and guardrails.
• Ability to support dependable model serving, GPU optimisation, and cost-conscious inference.
• Skill in designing solutions that span frontend, backend, data, and AI layers.
• Experience producing architectural decision records, technical design documents, and reference architectures.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, event-driven design, and microservices.
• Ability to design AI-focused data architectures, including modelling, pipelines, and governance.
• Experience with API design patterns such as REST, GraphQL, and gRPC for AI service integration.
• Strong security awareness, including threat modelling, responsible AI, data privacy, and compliance.
• Expert-level knowledge of cloud architecture across Azure, AWS, and GCP.
• Experience with managed AI services such as Bedrock, SageMaker, Vertex AI, and Azure OpenAI.
• Familiarity with serverless and container-based deployment patterns such as ECS, EKS, Cloud Run, and Lambda.
• Experience building vector and search infrastructure such as Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, and OpenSearch.
• Practical use of Infrastructure as Code tools and GitOps practices.
• Understanding of AI cost management and optimisation.
• Strong Python skills for prototyping, review, and technical decision-making.
• Working knowledge of TypeScript and JavaScript for full-stack solution design.
• Experience with AI frameworks such as Semantic Kernel and AgentCore.
• Ability to implement AI observability through tracing, logging, monitoring, and drift detection.
• Leadership skills for mentoring engineers, running workshops, and facilitating governance reviews.
• Ability to explain complex technical ideas clearly to non-technical audiences.

Why join Datacom

Datacom is one of the largest IT professional services providers in Australia and New Zealand, while still keeping a dynamic and agile feel similar to a smaller business. Its culture is shaped by its people, and the organisation aims to create an environment that feels energetic, collaborative, and supportive.

Employees benefit from social events, quiet and relaxed spaces, remote working, flexible hours, and professional development opportunities. The workplace encourages learning, career growth, teamwork, and authenticity, and contributions are recognised in a flat and collegial environment.

Working at Datacom means contributing to cutting-edge technology work that supports major enterprise organisations across Australia and New Zealand as they solve complex challenges and explore new possibilities.

The organisation is committed to being inclusive and welcoming, and it continues to invest in making the workplace friendly, supportive, and enjoyable for everyone.

Perks and working environment

Social events, chill-out spaces, remote working, flexi-hours, and professional development courses are part of the employee experience.

Location

The role is based in Tauranga, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, with remote working included.