Principal Architect

As a key technical leader for the Global AI Center of excellence, you'll be joining as a direct report to the MD, Epsilon India and you will lead AI adoption and transformation initiatives globally for Epsilon. You will design and implement AI systems, focusing on the overall infrastructure and architecture & also define and maintain governance boundaries and guardrails, aligned to the Publicis Groupe strategy. You will work with data scientists, engineers, and other teams to develop AI solutions, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and aligned with business goals. You will develop comprehensive solution blueprints, drive technical implementation, and contribute to AI revenue growth targets. You are expected to bring in your knowledge of technology advancements & also stay current in industry trends. Additionally, you will act as an SME & influence/innovate solutions, that impact the business to ensure we are headed towards becoming a modernised company. In this role we will look to you to focus on:

• Design and Development:

Create and harden the foundational architecture and solutions for AI, often including machine learning pipelines, natural language processing, and other AI technologies

• Collaboration and Communication:

Work closely with various teams, including data scientists, software engineers, and business stakeholders, to understand needs and deliver effective AI solutions.

• Technology Selection:

Provide recommendations on right technologies, platforms, and tools to build and deploy AI systems

• Solution Integration:

Ensure AI systems integrate seamlessly with existing business processes and IT infrastructure

• Performance Monitoring and Optimization:

Monitor the performance of AI systems, identify areas for improvement, and ensure the systems are cost-effective and sustainable

• Risk and Governance:

Design required policies, processes and technical frameworks to ensure AI systems are ethical, secure, and compliant with global regulations (such as the EU AI Act or NIST RMF). You will move governance from a static policy to an automated, engineering-led discipline, creating the guardrails that allow innovation to scale safely.

Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure adherence to different AI governance policies and guidelines.

• Staying Current:

Keep up with the latest advancements in AI and machine learning to ensure they are using best practices and implementing innovative solutions

What Will Our Ideal Candidate Have

Educational and Professional Background:

• Experience of leading and delivering cross-functional global initiatives
• Bachelor's/Master's degree in a technology-related field or equivalent experience
• 15+ years of hands-on experience in enterprise architecture with 5+ years of deep expertise in AI specific technologies and governance.
• Deep understanding of AI technologies and implementation methodologies & an SME in the industry

Leadership and Mentorship:

• Proven track record of influencing senior leadership & partnering with CXO teams in a matrixed organizational set-up.
• Experience providing mentorship to senior technical leaders
• Organizational and transformational leadership experience in an agile operating model
• Inspirational leader who is passionate about technology transformations
• Strong grasp of value creation and business capability models
• Innovative with a continuous improvement mindset
• Demonstrated ability to drive decisions

Strategic and Technical Expertise and Experience:

• Hands on experience with Large Language Models, agentic frameworks, ML Ops, and traditional AI and ML.
• Proven history of delivering large programs in the AI space, including integration of operational systems, APIs, and batch/streaming pipelines.
• Deep understanding of AI system governance and security, including data privacy, model integrity, observability and cost management.
• Proficient in cloud technologies and enterprise-grade AI/ML platforms (e.g., AWS Sagemaker, Bedrock, Agentic, Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure ML, Databricks).
• Expertise in LLMs, including fine-tuning, RAG, prompt engineering, multi-agent collaboration, orchestration frameworks, and alignment techniques. Demonstrated experience leading the development of strategic technology direction and architecture vision for a large organization.
• Developed technology target states and roadmaps aligned with short- and long-term business goals.
• Expert-level software engineering experience.
• Partnerships with hyperscalars and technology vendors for right build vs. buy evaluations.

Impact & Success Metrics

• Create a thriving AI culture within and across Epsilon through the AI Center of excellence
• Design, build, adoption, scale of AI capabilities to achieve target revenue impact
• Build a best-in-class marketplace & scale reusable solution components usage through better marketplace adoption across business units
• Growth in recurring revenue from AI-enhanced scaled solutions
• Expansion of organizational AI/ML capabilities and talent
• This role requires a unique blend of strategic vision, technical depth, and business insight to lead our organization in delivering next-generation marketing solutions powered by artificial intelligence.