Enterprise AI Solutions Architect - Hourly Contract

Stevens is a strategic advisory and technology firm that partners with companies on high-impact transformation and technology initiatives. We work closely with executive and technology leaders to solve complex problems, identify opportunities, and turn strategy into working solutions.

Our engagements often sit at the intersection of business strategy, enterprise architecture, and emerging technology. We help customers identify where AI can create meaningful business value, determine what should actually be built, and provide the technical leadership needed to move from concept to production.

We’re looking for an experienced Enterprise AI Solutions Architect to join Stevens as an hourly contractor, supporting enterprise customer engagements as project needs arise.

This is not a salaried or full-time employment position. Architects work with Stevens on a contract basis and are paid an agreed hourly rate for hours worked. Engagement scope and weekly hours may vary based on active customer projects.

This is a senior, highly customer-facing role. You’ll work directly with customer technology leaders, engineering teams, and Stevens delivery teams to understand complex business problems, shape AI use cases, design solutions, guide proofs of concept, and establish the architecture required to take successful solutions into production.

We’re specifically looking for someone who understands enterprise application development and architecture, not simply AI models or cloud infrastructure. The model is one part of the system. You should be comfortable thinking across applications, APIs, data, integrations, identity, security, cloud infrastructure, AI services, and production operations to design a complete solution.

Your work may include:

• Leading technical discovery and architecture sessions with enterprise customers.
• Translating business problems and AI opportunities into practical solution architectures and implementation plans.
• Designing enterprise AI applications using LLMs, RAG, agents, tool use, structured and unstructured data, APIs, and modern cloud services.
• Designing applications that integrate AI capabilities into existing enterprise systems, data platforms, SaaS applications, and business workflows.
• Architecting solutions primarily within AWS, including Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker.
• Evaluating models, platforms, frameworks, and architectural approaches based on the requirements of each use case.
• Helping customers make build-vs-buy decisions across a rapidly evolving AI technology landscape.
• Designing rapid proofs of concept while ensuring successful POCs have a realistic path to production.
• Defining architecture across application services, APIs, data, model infrastructure, integrations, identity, observability, and cloud infrastructure.
• Accounting for enterprise requirements including security, privacy, governance, scalability, reliability, performance, and cost.
• Establishing appropriate approaches to AI evaluation, guardrails, monitoring, and production operations.
• Working closely with engineers throughout implementation to ensure architectural decisions translate into high-quality working software.
• Reviewing technical approaches, identifying risks, and helping engineering teams navigate architectural tradeoffs.
• Presenting architecture recommendations and technical decisions to engineering teams, technology leaders, and senior customer stakeholders.

This isn’t a role where you’ll create an architecture diagram and hand it to someone else. We want architects who stay close to implementation, understand the consequences of their decisions, and can help a team navigate the difficult decisions that emerge as a solution gets built.

You’ll have significant autonomy and ownership. A successful architect at Stevens can walk into an ambiguous problem, quickly understand the customer’s business and technology environment, identify the decisions that actually matter, develop a point of view, and confidently guide the customer and delivery team toward a solution.

Requirements

• U.S. citizenship is required.
• 7+ years of relevant experience across software architecture, solutions architecture, application development, engineering, or technical consulting.
• Significant experience designing and delivering enterprise applications, platforms, or distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience architecting and implementing generative AI applications beyond basic prototypes or isolated model integrations.
• Experience taking applications or technical initiatives from discovery and proof of concept through production.
• Strong understanding of modern AI application patterns including RAG, agents, tool use, embeddings, vector search, model orchestration, evaluation, and guardrails.
• Strong AWS architecture experience, including practical experience with Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker.
• Experience working with commercial AI platforms and models including OpenAI and Anthropic Claude, along with familiarity with open-source models.
• Strong understanding of modern application architecture, backend services, APIs, databases, data architecture, distributed systems, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience integrating new applications and capabilities with existing enterprise systems and data sources.
• Familiarity with cloud engineering, DevOps, MLOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and production observability.
• Strong understanding of the security, identity, privacy, governance, reliability, scalability, and cost considerations involved in production enterprise systems.
• Ability to make pragmatic architectural decisions within complex existing technology environments where replacing everything and starting over isn’t an option.
• Ability to move comfortably between conversations about business requirements and detailed technical architecture.
• Experience leading technical discovery, architecture workshops, and customer-facing solution design.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts and tradeoffs clearly.
• Confidence presenting recommendations and challenging assumptions with senior technology and business stakeholders.
• Experience working in enterprise technology, consulting, professional services, systems integration, or another customer-facing technical environment.
• Availability during standard U.S. business hours for customer workshops, architecture sessions, and meetings as needed.

Experience at a major technology company, cloud provider, consulting firm, systems integrator, or enterprise software organization is a plus, but we care more about the quality and complexity of the problems you’ve solved than the names on your resume.

An active U.S. government security clearance is not required, but is strongly valued.

Benefits

Contract Structure

This position is structured as an hourly contract role, not a salaried position.

Architects are brought into customer engagements based on project requirements and are paid an agreed hourly rate for time worked. Hours may vary between engagements and over time depending on customer demand, project phase, and your availability.

Because this is a senior customer-facing position, you should be available during standard U.S. business hours when required for customer workshops, architecture sessions, and delivery-team collaboration. Outside of those commitments, we offer significant flexibility in how you manage your schedule.

When applying, please provide your desired hourly contract rate in USD, not an annual salary. Additional compensation is available for individuals who hold and maintain an active U.S. government security clearance.

At Stevens, you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Work on sophisticated enterprise AI initiatives across multiple industries and use cases.
• Work directly with customer technology leaders, executives, and engineering organizations.
• Own meaningful architectural decisions rather than operating as one small part of a large delivery organization.
• Work alongside a growing team of experienced engineers and technical leaders.
• Stay close to implementation and see the solutions you design actually get built.
• Work across modern AI technologies and architectures without being locked into a single model provider, platform, or framework.
• Have significant flexibility in how you manage your schedule outside of required customer meetings and collaboration.
• Work remotely from anywhere in the United States.
• Build experience across a variety of enterprise environments rather than maintaining a single internal platform.

We’re building Stevens around the idea that a small, highly capable team can do exceptional work for sophisticated customers without introducing the bureaucracy that often comes with traditional consulting.

We value good judgment, technical excellence, clear communication, intellectual curiosity, and pragmatic decision-making. We want people who are willing to challenge unnecessary complexity, recognize when a simpler solution is better, and say when AI isn’t the right answer to a problem.

If you enjoy solving difficult problems, working directly with customers, and helping build the next generation of enterprise AI applications, we’d love to work with you.