AI Solutions Architect / FDE

About the role

D2R AI Labs is looking for a hands-on Senior AI Solutions Architect / Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) with 8-12 years of experience to design, build, deploy and scale enterprise AI solutions.

Most GenAI projects don't fail at the model. They fail in the gap between a demo and a client's production environment. This role exists to close that gap - combining AI engineering, solution architecture, enterprise integration and direct customer ownership, from business discovery and architecture through production deployment and optimisation.

This is customer-facing ownership, not internal development or architecture documentation alone.

Full job description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18KoIX0NCNOw3spiMtwalcU25hDnV7Ikj/preview

DETAILS

• Experience: 8-12 years

• Compensation: INR 30-50 LPA, based on experience, technical depth, certifications and customer-facing capability

• Location: Flexible - Remote, Hybrid or in-office (Chennai), based on what works for you

• Engagement: Full-time, Contract or C2H

WHAT YOU'LL DO

AI architecture and solution design

• Design scalable, secure, production-ready AI/ML and Generative AI architectures.

• Architect solutions using LLMs/SLMs, RAG, Agentic AI, AI agents, embeddings, vector databases and retrieval systems.

• Translate business requirements into technical architectures, technology choices and implementation roadmaps.

• Balance performance, latency, scalability, security and cost when selecting models and architectures.

Customer-facing / FDE ownership

• Work directly with enterprise customers and senior stakeholders to identify high-value AI opportunities.

• Own delivery from discovery and POC through production deployment, adoption and optimisation.

• Lead architecture workshops, technical discussions, solution demos and customer presentations.

• Bridge customer requirements with engineering and product teams, and rapidly validate solutions in real-world environments.

Hands-on AI engineering

• Build production-grade AI applications using Python and modern AI/ML frameworks.

• Develop RAG pipelines covering ingestion, chunking, embeddings, indexing, retrieval, reranking, context management and evaluation.

• Build and orchestrate AI agents and workflows using LangChain, LangGraph or equivalent frameworks.

• Work with LLM/SLM APIs, open-source models, fine-tuning, inference optimisation and model evaluation.

• Develop APIs, backend services and scalable data pipelines for enterprise AI applications.

Enterprise deployment and integration

• Integrate AI solutions with ERP, CRM, ITSM/ticketing systems, databases, business applications and third-party APIs.

• Deploy using Docker, Kubernetes and major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP).

• Work with GPU infrastructure, model serving, inference optimisation, scalability, latency and cost optimisation.

• Implement AI observability, monitoring, evaluation and production performance measurement.

Technical leadership

• Drive architecture decisions, engineering standards, reusable patterns and AI development frameworks.

• Mentor engineers and provide technical direction across AI and software engineering initiatives.

• Create reusable AI playbooks, accelerators, frameworks and best practices.

WHAT YOU'LL BRING (MUST-HAVE)

• 8-12 years of overall software/technology experience, with significant AI/ML and/or enterprise architecture experience.

• Strong customer-facing technical delivery and enterprise stakeholder management - proven ability to independently lead discovery sessions and technical conversations with senior business stakeholders.

• Production experience with Generative AI, RAG, LLMs/SLMs, embeddings, retrieval systems and/or Agentic AI.

• Strong hands-on Python development.

• LangChain and/or LangGraph experience.

• Strong software architecture and AI system design capabilities.

• Experience taking AI solutions from POC/prototype to production.

• Cloud deployment plus Docker/Kubernetes experience.

• Experience integrating with at least one major enterprise system: ERP, CRM, ITSM/ticketing, database or business API.

NICE TO HAVE

• Palantir Foundry certification (Application Developer / Data Engineer track - AIP, Ontology) and hands-on Foundry/AIP experience.

• GPU optimisation and large-scale model inference.

• AI evaluation frameworks and production observability.

• Fine-tuning and preference optimisation (LoRA, QLoRA, PEFT, distillation, DPO, GRPO).

• Experience building reusable AI platforms, accelerators or internal frameworks.

• Domain experience in Banking & Finance (preferred) or Energy & Utilities.

• Strong executive-level communication and presentation skills.

THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

Someone who can walk into a customer environment, understand the business problem, design the AI solution, build and integrate it, take it to production, and keep improving its performance and business impact.

You'll demonstrate:

• Clear, end-to-end ownership: business problem to architecture to prototype to production.

• Strong coding ability alongside architecture and system-design skills.

• The ability to make, explain and defend technical architecture decisions.

• Proven stakeholder management - comfortable independently driving discovery sessions with senior business stakeholders, not just engineering teams.

• A track record of operating AI systems in production with measurable business impact.