Principal Architect - Data & AI

About this role

About Us

Since 1989, SHI International Corp. has helped organizations change the world through technology. We’ve grown every year since, and today we’re proud to be a $16 billion global provider of IT solutions and services.   Over 17,000 organizations worldwide rely on SHI’s concierge approach to help them solve what’s next. But the heartbeat of SHI is our employees – all 7,000 of them. If you join our team, you’ll enjoy: • Our commitment to diversity, as the largest minority- and woman-owned enterprise in the U.S.

• Continuous professional growth and leadership opportunities.

• Health, wellness, and financial benefits to offer peace of mind to you and your family.

• World-class facilities and the technology you need to thrive – in our offices or yours. 

Job Summary

The Principal Architect works across data engineering, data visualization, data governance, and AI rather than within a single technical area. On large, multi-disciplinary engagements, this role orchestrates a unified technical approach across technical area leads, each of whom owns depth within their own discipline. Alongside that delivery leadership, this role carries the practice maturation agenda: the delivery standards, accelerators, engineering practices, evaluation rubrics, and advisory frameworks that make delivery consistent and repeatable as the practice scales. The Principal Architect may be billable on engagements where specific technical depth or cross-discipline technical leadership is required.

Role Description Cross-Practice Delivery Leadership  

• Lead the technical delivery approach on large, multi-disciplinary engagements spanning data engineering, data visualization, data governance, and AI.  

• Orchestrate a unified solution approach across capability leads, integrating each discipline’s technical direction into one coherent delivery plan with clear sequencing, dependencies, and shared standards.  

• Own delivery approach rather than solution design within any single discipline: how the work is structured, sequenced, staffed, and de-risked, and where the technical decision points sit.  

• Identify   delivery risk early and intervene on   engagements   drifting on approach, quality, or coherence across workstreams.  

Practice Maturation  

Priorities are set with the Practice Manager, each carried from assessment through to an adopted standard.  

• Delivery Excellence: baseline delivery standards, reusable accelerators and templates, engineering practices informed by DORA capabilities, and adaptive delivery approaches that balance program predictability with the experimentation   required by   data and AI   projects .  

• Talent and Engagement Model: technical interview standards and calibration, a consistent hiring bar, skills inventory and workforce visibility, and engagement health practices that protect consultant focus.  

• Scoping and Advisory Excellence: structured recommendation frameworks, strategic opportunity framing that translates vague asks into clarified business problems, and clearer engagement pathways between delivery, presales, and the PMO.  

• Data and AI Fluency: capability assessment, targeted learning pathways mapped to assessment outcomes and to the pace of Microsoft platform change, and improved use of internal data for practice decision-making.  

• Build capabilities so they outlast the person driving them, with documented standards, named owners, and adoption evidence .  

AI-Accelerated Delivery  

• Apply AI tooling and agentic patterns to how the practice delivers   value , improving the speed, consistency, and quality of consulting work   across all engagements .  

• Evaluate where AI meaningfully changes delivery economics and where it introduces review overhead without net   gain and   build the evidence to distinguish the two.  

• Fold proven patterns into delivery standards and accelerators so that gains are structural to the practice rather than dependent on individual   habit .  

Practice Leadership and Capability Growth  

• Coach architects and consultants across disciplines on delivery approach, consulting judgment, and technical decision-making. This is a player-coach role without direct reporting relationships.  

• Influence the priorities of   technical   leads where cross-practice coherence, engagement risk, or the practice maturation agenda requires it.   

Behaviors and Competencies ​ This role sits at the top of the technical career architecture and is expected to   demonstrate   expert-level capability across the following.  

• Subject Matter Expertise: Recognized depth in one discipline and sufficient working command of others to lead delivery, evaluate technical decisions, and   identify   risk outside their primary area.  

• Facilitation: Leads discovery, architecture review, and executive working sessions to a decision, including where stakeholders   disagree   or the problem is poorly defined at the outset.  

• Communication: Explains complex technical trade-offs to executive, business, and technical audiences, and enables effective communication between groups that do not naturally align.  

• Relationship Management: Builds durable trust with client executives, internal leadership, partners, and delivery teams, and sustains it through difficult engagements.  

• Collaboration: Works in the open across   technical disciplines , presales, PMO, and partner organizations, treating shared outcomes as the measure of success.   Collaborates closely with Principal Architects from other delivery teams to enable consistent delivery approach and continuous improvement within SHI Services.   

• Problem Solving:   Anticipates   systemic problems, addresses root causes rather than symptoms, and proposes solutions that hold up as the practice scales.  

Skill Level Requirements We are looking for candidates who   demonstrate   strength across these areas. Deep   expertise   in every technology listed is not expected. Candidates should not se

Similar jobs

• Principal Architect – Data & AI Solutions — 3cloud · Remote
• Senior Architect - Data & AI — 3cloud · Remote
• Principal Architect - Applied AI & Machine Learning — 3cloud · Remote
• Principal Data Architect - AI — Meridianlink · Remote
• Lead AI Architect - Data Platform — Banyansoftware · United States
• Principal Technical Architect - AI/ML — Snowflake · Remote
• Principal AI/ML Architect — Caylent · Remote
• Principal Architect, AI Ecosystem & Partner Integrations — Verkada · United States