Principal AI Architect & Governance

Description

You will be the senior technical authority for the company's AI platform design, enterprise architecture standards, and responsible AI, shaping how AI systems are designed, built, connected, and governed so they stay secure, compliant, scalable, reliable, and tied to business goals.

This is a senior, non-people-management role that pairs hands-on technical depth with broad influence. You will work with engineers on architecture decisions, turn new AI capabilities into practical enterprise patterns, and advise technology, business, security, legal, and data leaders on platform choices and risk.

The company makes athletic apparel with a casual look meant for everyday wear, inspired by an active coastal California lifestyle that combines fitness, creative expression, and daily life.

Responsibilities

• Set the direction of enterprise AI architecture as the business grows and the AI field matures.
• Create reference architectures, engineering standards, and integration patterns that teams use when building AI systems.
• Lead evaluations of AI platforms, foundation models, cloud services, and tooling, recommending adoption based on performance, cost, security, and fit.
• Decide whether to build, buy, or partner, and explain the reasoning to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Point out when a proposed AI approach is the wrong fit for a problem.
• Raise engineers' architecture skills through design reviews, pairing, documentation, and reusable patterns.
• Build the AI governance framework covering model risk management, data privacy, bias detection, audit trails, and regulatory compliance.
• Write AI engineering standards, security guardrails, testing and evaluation protocols, and responsible AI policies that every team follows.
• Design governance that lets teams ship AI responsibly without losing speed.
• Work with Legal, Compliance, Security, and Data teams to meet regulations, data handling rules, and ethical standards.
• Run monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvement for AI systems in production.
• Align architecture and governance with senior technology and business leaders' priorities and investment decisions.
• Speak clearly on AI architecture and risk to executives, engineering leaders, partners, and auditors.
• Bring AI product, engineering, and data teams in early so architecture and governance needs are built in from the start.
• Mentor engineers and technical leads through guidance, reviews, and shared standards they can apply on their own.
• Report on platform reliability, governance adherence, security posture, and the business impact of AI architecture work.
• Track the AI landscape and bring relevant emerging tools and practices into the company's AI ecosystem.
• Use operational data to refine standards and governance and reduce friction for teams building AI responsibly.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or a related technical field.
• 12+ years in software engineering, platform engineering, or technology architecture, including major ownership of enterprise AI or data platform architecture at scale.
• Hands-on experience designing and governing production AI systems, including LLMs, agentic systems, ML pipelines, and model serving infrastructure.
• Deep knowledge of enterprise AI governance, risk management, security, and compliance frameworks.
• A track record of setting technical standards and driving adoption across large, cross-functional engineering organizations through influence rather than formal authority.
• Experience with cloud-native architecture on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, and with patterns such as RAG, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks.
• Experience building and deploying with frontier AI lab models, platforms, or frameworks, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or Meta.
• Excellent communication skills, able to explain complex AI architecture and governance clearly to engineering, business, and executive audiences.
• Strong executive presence, with the ability to build alignment, challenge assumptions constructively, and influence decisions across a matrixed organization.
• Preferred qualifications:
• Preferred: experience with enterprise AI governance platforms, model risk management frameworks, or AI regulatory standards such as the EU AI Act or NIST AI RMF.
• Preferred: familiarity with MLOps, model lifecycle management, AI observability, and responsible AI tooling.
• Preferred: experience with low-code and pro-code enterprise AI platforms such as Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, or Google Gemini Enterprise.
• Preferred: background in retail, direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, or a similar consumer environment.
• Preferred: a record of establishing and scaling practical architecture standards and governance in high-growth organizations.
• Preferred: active in the broader AI and technology community through publications, speaking, or open-source contributions.

Conditions

The salary range is $197,500 to $264,390 per year.

This role is bonus eligible.

All applicant information is kept confidential in line with EEO guidelines.

Benefits

• Health insurance.
• Savings and retirement plan.
• Employee assistance program.
• Generous employee discount and industry perks.
• Paid time off.
• Wellness and fitness benefits.