{"id":1897207,"url":"https://alion.io/job/microsoft-principal-architect-ai","title":"Principal Architect - AI","company":{"id":18,"name":"Microsoft","domain":"microsoft.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/microsoft","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Eightfold","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":85,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Bengaluru, India","Hyderabad, India","Noida, India"],"countries":["IN"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":27000,"max_usd":58000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":30},"experience_years_min":22,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-08T14:01:29Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-11T00:43:26Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":275,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":274},"description":"OverviewMicrosoft Industry Solutions - Global Center Innovation and Delivery Center (GCID) delivers end-to-end solutions by enabling accelerated adoption and productive use of Microsoft technologies. An organization of well over 1000+ exceptional people, GCID presents a compelling opportunity for senior technical leaders to drive enterprise scale transformation through consulting, architecture, and delivery leadership.\nThe Principal Architect is a senior technical and business leader accountable for shaping, influencing, and driving successful outcomes across large, complex, multiyear enterprise engagements. This role operates at the convergence of technology, business strategy, and executive decision making, acting as a trusted advisor to customer CEO, CIO, CTO, and CDO stakeholders.\nResponsibilities\nEngineering Excellence\nSet and enforce engineering excellence standards across organizations, ensuring architecture integrity, quality, security, resilience, and performance at enterprise scale.\n\nChampion modern engineering practices including AI assisted development, DevSecOps, SRE, observability, and platform engineering.\n\nDrive creation and reuse of enterprise grade reference architectures, accelerators, patterns, and paved road platforms.\n\nEstablish and govern architecture review cadences aligned with the Microsoft WellArchitected Framework, influencing decisions at executive and transformation program levels.\n\nInnovation & Thought Leadership\nAct as a visible thought leader with customers and internal leadership-shaping future state architectures, modernization strategies, and AI adoption roadmaps.\n\nTrack and evaluate emerging technologies, AI platforms, and engineering paradigms to inform strategic investments and differentiated offerings.\n\nInfluence innovation across GCID by sharing best practices, defining reusable assets, and mentoring senior architects.\n\nClient Engagement & Solutioning\nOperate as a trusted advisor to CEO / CIO / CTO stakeholders, guiding executive level conversations on digital transformation, AI adoption, cloud strategy, platform modernization, and operating model changes.\n\nLead executive design sessions, architecture boards, and transformation roadmap reviews, providing clear tradeoff analysis across cost, risk, timetovalue, and strategic outcomes.\n\nOwn technical leadership during presales, deal shaping, and complex pursuits, including estimates, risk profiling, executive narratives, and differentiated solution design.\n\nBuild long term executive relationships that position GCID as a strategic transformation partner, not just a delivery vendor.\n\nTeam Leadership, Mentorship & Organizational Impact\nProvide seniormost technical leadership across multiple architect teams, fostering a strong culture of accountability, rigor, and innovation.\n\nMentor and develop senior and principal architects, setting clear expectations for L64/L65 progression and impact.\n\nInfluence talent strategy, capability development, and succession planning across Apps & AI engineering communities.\n\nQuality, Security & Compliance\nEnsure enterprise grade security, governance, reliability, and compliance across all engagements.\n\nDrive adoption of secure by design, Responsible AI, and privacy first engineering practices aligned with customer regulatory and risk postures.\n\nPartner with customer security, risk, and compliance leadership to design architectures ready for regulated and highly scrutinized environments.\n\nOther\nEmbody our culture and values\n\nQualifications\n22+ years of experience in software engineering and enterprise architecture, with significant experience operating at CxO level technical leadership roles.\n\nProven track record leading largescale transformation programs across cloud, data, AI, and modern application platforms.\n\nStrong executive communication, stakeholder influence, and decision making capability.\n\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience; advanced certifications and industry recognition preferred.\n\nAreas of Expertise\n(All areas below assume enterprise scale ownership and executive level influence)\nFull Stack Application Engineering\nEnd-to-end architecture leadership for modern, largescale application ecosystems\n\nDeep expertise in distributed systems, scalability, performance, and secure application design\n\nAIDriven & AIEnabled Application Development\nDefine and govern enterprise AI architectures using Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Services, and agentic systems\n\nExecutive oversight of Responsible AI, governance, observability, and cost optimization strategies\n\nCloudNative Architecture (Azure)\nDesign and influence platform centric, PaaSfirst enterprise architectures\n\nLead cost, resilience, security, and multiregion strategies aligned to business continuity goals\n\nDevOps, Platform & Developer Productivity\nShape enterprise DevOps, platform engineering, and developer productivity strategies\n\nDrive standardization of CI/CD, IaC, security automation, and pavedroad platforms\n\nSolutioning, PreSales & Strategic Leadership\nOwn technical strategy for large, complex, highvalue deals\n\nTranslate executive business priorities into competitive, differentiated architectures\n\nInfluence both customer and internal leadership on technical investment and risk decisions\n\nFrontier Engineering & Customer Enablement Skills\nLead earlystage innovation, pilots, and lighthouse programs with executive sponsorship\n\nGuide customers from whiteboard concepts to scaled production platforms\n\nOperate confidently in ambiguous, highpressure executive environments, balancing speed with governance\n\nPersonal Attributes\nExecutive presence with the ability to influence CEO / CIO / CTO stakeholders\n\nStrong strategic thinking combined with deep technical credibility\n\nOutcome oriented mindset with a focus on measurable business impact\n\nPassion for technology, leadership, and continuous growth\n\nThis position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.\nMicrosoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. 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