AI Solution Architect

Sword is a leading provider of business technology solutions within the Energy, Public and Finance Sectors, driving transformational change within our clients. We use proven technology, specialist teams and domain expertise to build solid technical foundations across platforms, data, and business applications. We have a passion for using technology to solve business problems, working in partnership with our clients to help in achieving their goals.

Sword is strengthening its Data, Analytics, AI and automation capability as demand grows for practical, secure and scalable AI transformation.

Strategic Value to Sword

The AI Solution Architect creates value by connecting customer business challenges with practical AI-enabled transformation. The role accelerates sales, improves delivery quality, strengthens technical credibility and ensures Sword's AI offerings remain scalable, differentiated and aligned to market demand.

About the role:

The AI Solution Architect is responsible for designing and governing AI, Data and Automation solutions that deliver measurable business outcomes for customers. The role bridges business strategy and technical implementation, translating customer challenges into scalable, secure and commercially viable solutions.

Working across pre-sales, delivery and capability development, the AI Solution Architect provides technical leadership for AI transformation initiatives, ensuring solutions align with customer objectives, enterprise architecture standards, security requirements and responsible AI principles.

The role acts as a trusted advisor to customers, delivery teams, and senior stakeholders, supporting the full lifecycle from opportunity shaping and solution design through to implementation and operational adoption.

Key Responsibilities

Solution Architecture & Design

• Lead the architecture and design of AI, Data and Automation solutions.

• Define end-to-end solution architectures spanning data platforms, AI models, integrations, security and operational support.

• Produce architecture artefacts, technical designs and implementation roadmaps.

• Ensure solutions are scalable, maintainable and aligned to enterprise standards.

• Design agentic AI, GenAI, machine learning and automation solutions integrated with business processes and enterprise systems.

Customer Advisory & Consulting

• Act as a trusted advisor to customer stakeholders, technology leaders and business sponsors.

• Facilitate discovery workshops to identify opportunities for AI-enabled transformation.

• Translate business requirements into practical, outcome-focused solution designs.

• Provide guidance on AI strategy, governance, operating models and adoption approaches.

• Support customers in defining value cases, investment priorities and transformation roadmaps.

Technical Leadership

• Provide leadership and direction across multidisciplinary delivery teams.

• Define technical standards, architecture principles and best practices.

• Mentor engineers, consultants and emerging architects.

• Conduct technical assurance reviews and architecture governance activities.

• Support complex problem solving and technical decision making across programmes.

Pre-Sales & Solution Shaping

• Support sales teams in developing and qualifying opportunities.

• Lead solution design activities for proposals, bids and customer presentations.

• Contribute to estimates, Statements of Work and commercial responses.

• Help position Sword as a trusted Data & AI transformation partner.

• Present solution visions and articulate business value to executive stakeholders.

• Can facilitate executive workshops, challenge customer assumptions, communicate complex concepts simply and build confidence with senior stakeholders.

Governance, Security & Responsible AI

• Ensure AI solutions adhere to security, compliance and governance requirements.

• Define controls for responsible AI, model oversight, data privacy and risk management.

• Review architecture decisions for ethical and regulatory compliance.

• Establish monitoring, operational readiness and support models.

• Drive best practice across AI lifecycle management and continuous improvement.

Success Measures

The AI Solution Architect will be successful when:

• Customers view Sword as a trusted strategic transformation partner.

• AI opportunities progress into high-value engagements and revenue growth.

• Solutions are delivered securely on time and aligned to business outcomes.

• Architecture standards are consistently applied across engagements.

• Reusable patterns, accelerators and reference architectures improve delivery efficiency.

• Teams are enabled through strong technical leadership and mentoring.

• AI solutions demonstrate measurable operational, financial or customer value.

Requirements

Essential Experience

• Proven experience in solution architecture within Data, Analytics, AI or Digital Transformation.

• Experience delivering enterprise-scale AI, automation or data platform programmes.

• Strong stakeholder management across business and technology functions.

• Experience shaping customer opportunities and supporting pre-sales activities.

• Experience operating within consulting, professional services or transformation environments.

Technical capabilities

A strong AI Solution Architect should also have practical experience with:

• Foundation Models

• OpenAI

• Azure OpenAI

• Anthropic

• Google Gemini

• Model selection and benchmarking

• Prompt engineering

• Fine-tuning and model customisation where appropriate

Agentic AI

• Multi-agent systems

• Tool calling

• Function orchestration

• Workflow automation

• Planning and reasoning patterns

• Human-in-the-loop design

Knowledge & Retrieval

• RAG architectures

• Vector databases

• Semantic search

• Enterprise search

• Document ingestion

• Knowledge graphs (advantageous)

Integration

• APIs

• Event-driven architectures

• Microsoft ecosystem

• ServiceNow

• CRM/ERP integration

• Identity management

Software Engineering

• Python

• REST APIs

• Git

• CI/CD

• Containers

• Infrastructure as Code

• Testing AI systems

Platform Engineering

• Kubernetes

• Azure AI Foundry

• Databricks

• Microsoft Fabric

• Snowflake

• MLOps/LLMOps tooling

Consulting competencies

The AI Solution Architect should be able to:

• Facilitate AI discovery workshops.

• Identify and prioritise business use cases.

• Estimate business value and ROI.

• Create AI roadmaps.

• Produce reference architectures.

• Explain technical trade-offs to executives.

• Balance innovation with delivery risk.

• Influence without relying on formal authority.

Personal Attributes

• Strategic thinker with a strong commercial mindset.

• Customer-centric and outcome focused.

• Excellent communication and facilitation skills.

• Comfortable operating from boardroom discussions to technical design workshops.

• Curious, innovative and passionate about emerging AI technologies.

Benefits

At Sword, our core values and culture are based on caring about our people, investing in training and career development, and building inclusive teams where we are all encouraged to contribute to achieve success. We offer comprehensive benefits designed to support your professional development and enhance your overall quality of life. In addition to a Competitive Salary, here's what you can expect as part of our benefits package:

• Personalised Career Development: We create a development plan customised to your goals and aspirations, with a range of learning and development opportunities within a culture that encourages growth.
• Flexible working: Flexible work arrangements to support your work-life balance. We can’t promise to always be able to meet every request, however, are keen to discuss your individual preferences to make it work where we can.
• A Fantastic Benefits Package: This includes generous annual leave allowance, enhanced family friendly benefits, pension scheme, access to private health, well-being, and insurance schemes.

At Sword we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer, ensuring that all applicants receive fair and equal consideration for employment, regardless of whether they meet every requirement. If you don’t tick all the boxes but feel you have some of the relevant skills and experience we’re looking for, please do consider applying and highlight your transferable skills and experience. We embrace diversity in all its forms, valuing individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Your perspective and potential are important to us.

If we can do anything to help make the hiring process more accessible, please let our talent acquisition team know when you apply so we can support any adjustments.