Head of AI Architecture and Strategy

A leading investment management organization is seeking an experienced Head of AI Architecture & Strategy to lead the architecture of its shared AI technology platform and contribute to its long-term technical direction.This is a senior, hands-on position combining enterprise AI architecture, platform engineering, and technical leadership. The successful candidate will develop scalable, secure, reusable AI infrastructure supporting research, investment, and internal business teams.ResponsibilitiesOwn the architecture of shared AI services, including model gateways, inference, agent runtimes, orchestration, and retrieval.Guide the engineering of AI platform capabilities, agent frameworks, MCP integrations, APIs, and reusable developer tools.Establish architectural standards, design patterns, and implementation guidelines.Evaluate AI technologies and contribute to platform strategy and roadmap development.Provide hands-on technical architecture, prototyping, engineering reviews, and implementation guidance.Ensure production platforms incorporate appropriate security, access controls, observability, evaluation, and reliability.Lead and mentor technical engineering teams while promoting adoption of shared platform capabilities.Work closely with software engineering, research, investment, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and technology leadership.Role Requirements10+ years of relevant engineering experience with senior technical leadership responsibilities.Deep hands-on architecture experience involving complex enterprise or shared platforms.Strong knowledge of LLMs, AI agents, RAG, model serving, and enterprise AI systems.Strong Python software development expertise.Experience with distributed systems, APIs, Kubernetes, containerization, and cloud or hybrid infrastructure.Proven engineering leadership and ownership of production technology platforms.Understanding of platform security, access management, reliability, and observability.Strong technical judgment, architecture decision-making, and stakeholder communication.Bachelor's degree in a related technical discipline or equivalent practical experience.Ability to work onsite in Midtown Manhattan four days per week.Nice to HaveInvestment management, hedge fund, quantitative trading, or financial-services experience.Experience building enterprise AI or internal developer platforms.Agent frameworks, MCP, AI evaluation, and LLMOps/MLOps experience.GPU-backed infrastructure or inference optimization experience.Vendor or platform cost management and an advanced technical degree.