AI Solution Architect

iqbusiness South Africa

We are recruiting an AI Solutions Architect to lead the design and delivery of enterprise-grade AI and Generative AI solutions across cloud platforms, with a strong emphasis on production deployment, business value and consulting-led delivery.

This role sits at the intersection of:

  • Solution architecture (end-to-end systems design)
  • AI engineering (capability awareness, not hands-on build ownership)
  • Consulting (client engagement, commercial alignment, pre-sales)

The successful candidate will translate complex business problems into scalable AI architectures, lead multidisciplinary teams, and ensure AI solutions are aligned to enterprise systems, governance, and measurable outcomes.

Role Context & Positioning

  • Senior member of the AI & Data capability working across multiple client engagements
  • Acts as the bridge between AI engineering, architecture, and business stakeholders
  • Owns solution design, architecture governance and delivery oversight
  • Plays a key role in pre-sales, client shaping, and capability development

Responsibilities

AI Solution Architecture & Design

  • Lead the design of end-to-end AI architectures across data, application and integration layers
    • Generative AI (LLMs, RAG, agents)
    • Document intelligence and automation
    • Enterprise AI platforms and APIs
  • Define:
    • Data flow, integration patterns, and system architecture
    • Retrieval, orchestration and agent interaction patterns
    • Security, governance and deployment architectures

Client Advisory & Solution Shaping

  • Lead discovery workshops and use case definition sessions
  • Translate business problems into AI-enabled solutions and architecture blueprints
  • Advise clients on:
    • AI adoption roadmaps
    • Architecture approaches (build vs buy vs hybrid)
    • Trade-offs, risks, and ROI

Delivery Leadership

Own architecture across delivery lifecycle: Discovery design build oversight deployment

    • optimisation
  • Guide engineering teams on:
    • Architecture decisions
    • Design patterns and best practice
  • Ensure:
    • Production-grade delivery
    • Alignment to enterprise systems and constraints

Cloud AI Architecture

  • Architect solutions across at least one hyperscaler (Azure preferred), including:
    • Azure OpenAI, AI Foundry, AI Search, Document Intelligence
    • Equivalent AWS (Bedrock) or GCP (Vertex AI) services
  • Define:
    • Deployment patterns (APIs, microservices, serverless)
    • Integration into enterprise ecosystems
    • Security, networking and governance models

Data & AI Platform Design

  • Design data foundations required for AI:
    • Data pipelines, ingestion patterns, storage and modelling
    • Vector databases, embeddings and retrieval strategies
  • Ensure:
    • Data quality, lineage, and governance alignment
    • AI-readiness of enterprise data platforms

Pre-Sales & Commercial Contribution

  • Support and lead:
    • Solution design for proposals and RFPs
    • Estimation, costing and effort modelling
  • Contribute to:
    • Client pitches and demos
    • Opportunity shaping and deal conversion

Capability Building & Thought Leadership

  • Develop:
    • Reference architectures and reusable solution patterns
  • Mentor:
    • Engineers and consultants
  • Contribute to:
    • Internal capability development and AI maturity

Requirements

Consulting & Leadership

  • 7–12+ years in technology, data or solution architecture
  • 3–5+ years in consulting / client-facing architecture roles
  • Proven experience:
    • Leading AI or data engagements
    • Managing multidisciplinary teams
    • Engaging senior stakeholders and executives

AI & Generative AI

  • Practical experience designing solutions involving:
    • LLMs and Generative AI applications
    • RAG architectures and retrieval systems
    • AI agents / orchestration patterns
  • Strong understanding of:
    • Prompting, evaluation and guardrails
    • Enterprise AI use cases and limitations

Solution Architecture

  • Strong experience designing:
    • Distributed systems and microservice architectures
    • API-driven integrations
    • Enterprise-scale cloud solutions
  • Ability to clearly articulate architecture decisions and trade-offs

Cloud (At least one CSP, Azure preferred)

  • Azure (preferred): OpenAI, AI Foundry, Synapse, Data Lake, App Services
  • AWS: Bedrock, Lambda, S3
  • GCP: Vertex AI, Cloud Run

Data & AI Platform Understanding

  • Strong grounding in:
    • Data engineering concepts (pipelines, modelling, lakehouse)
    • AI system data flows (embeddings, chunking, indexing)
  • Experience designing AI-ready data ecosystems

Business & Communication

  • Ability to:
    • Translate technical designs into business outcomes
    • Communicate with C-suite and architecture boards
  • Strong commercial acumen and delivery mindset

As all iqbusiness roles require honesty in the handling of or access to cash, finances, financial systems, or confidential information; our recruitment process requires that the following background checks be completed: credit, criminal, ID, and qualification verification

iqbusiness is committed to sustainable growth and transformation, we embrace diversity and employ previously disadvantaged individuals