AI Tech Lead / AI Architect

Location - PAN India (Hybrid) | Data, Analytics & AI | Full time | Hands-on GenAI Delivery Leadership

About Us

Straive is a global leader in data analytics and AI operationalization, helping enterprises embed advanced AI and data capabilities into core business workflows to deliver measurable business outcomes and ROI. With a workforce of ~20,000 professionals serving 350+ clients across 30+ markets, Straive combines technical scale with deep domain expertise. A key differentiator is its network of over 6,000 subject matter experts who specialize in managing and enriching complex, unstructured data enabling organizations to build AI systems grounded in accuracy, context, and business relevance.

The company continues to earn recognition from leading industry analysts and was recently named a Leader in AIM's 2026 Generative AI and Data Engineering PeMa Quadrants. Backed by EQT—a purpose-driven global investment organization which was ranked among the world's leading private equity firms by PEI in 2025—Straive is positioned as a high-value alternative to traditional IT services providers, combining domain-led intelligence with AI execution at scale.

About the Role

We are seeking a hands-on AI Architect/Tech Lead to lead one or more Generative AI delivery pods for a financial-services client. The role sits between our Senior AI Engineers and the Engagement Manager.

You own the technical direction and day-to-day delivery of your pod: you design the architecture, review the work and unblock it, and you are the technical voice with client architects, platform and security teams. You turn business asks into designs, plans and estimates, and you are accountable for what goes to production.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

1. Solution Architecture: Own the architecture for GenAI applications (RAG, agentic workflows, document intelligence, evaluation and guardrails) on Azure: Azure OpenAI / AI Foundry, AI Search, Cosmos DB, Functions / App Service, APIM or an AI gateway.
2. Engineering Standards: Set and enforce branching and PR reviews, testing, IaC (Terraform), CI/CD (GitHub Actions), observability, security and cost practices.
3.



Trade-off Decisions: Make and document the calls on model choice and routing, retrieval design, latency and cost, and build versus buy, so the team and the client can follow them.
4. Evaluation & Guardrails: Build evaluation in from the start: golden datasets, regression gates on every prompt or code change, LLM-as-judge where it fits, content filters and human review for high-risk outputs.
5. Production Readiness: Run release readiness: UAT support, release notes, rollback plans and production hand-off.

People, Delivery & Client Leadership

- Pod Leadership: Lead a pod of 4-8 engineers (AI, backend, data, full-stack): plan sprints, allocate work, review code and designs, and grow each person. You are the first escalation point for your pod.
- Delivery Ownership: Estimate, plan and track delivery; surface risks and dependencies early (environments, access, client approvals) and drive them to closure.
- Client Technical Lead: Act as the senior technical point of contact with client architects, platform, security and governance teams; lead design walkthroughs, demos and technical decisions.
- Scoping & Communication: Translate vague business asks into scoped solutions and phased plans, push back with options when a request is not feasible, and work with the Engagement Manager on scope, staffing and status.

Required Experience and Qualifications

- Overall Professional Experience: 8-12 years in software or data/ML engineering, with progressive technical leadership.
- AI/ML & GenAI Experience: 3+ years building and shipping Generative AI applications to production.
- Team Leadership: At least 2 years leading engineers: allocation, reviews, mentoring and delivery accountability.

Core Technical Competencies

- Generative AI & LLMs: Hands-on depth in LLM application patterns (RAG,



hybrid search and re-ranking, agents and tools/MCP, structured outputs) and evaluation/observability tooling (RAGAS, LangSmith, Langfuse or similar).
- Azure AI Platform: Production experience with Azure OpenAI / AI Foundry, AI Search, Cosmos DB, Functions / App Service, Key Vault, private networking and Entra ID / managed identity. AWS experience is acceptable with a clear path to Azure.
- Responsible AI & Security: Content filters and guardrails, prompt-injection and data-leakage risks, PII handling, access control and audit logging in a regulated (financial services) environment.
- Backend & DevOps: Strong Python (FastAPI, AsyncIO), Docker, Terraform, CI/CD and environment promotion (dev / UAT / prod) with rollback.
- Communication: Clear written and spoken communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Experience & Education

- Financial services or asset-management domain experience.
- AI gateway / API management (APIM, Kong), model routing and cost control; document intelligence and OCR (Azure Document Intelligence / Content Understanding).
- Working knowledge of React for chat and operations UIs.

Recognition & Achievements

- We have been recognized as a Star Performer in Data & AI Services Specialists - Everest's North America PEAK Matrix 2025, and as a Leader in AIM's PeMa Quadrant of Agentic AI Service Providers - 2025.
- In Nov 2023, Straive acquired Gramener, an award-winning, design-led data science company, enhancing our data, analytics, and AI capabilities. In June 2025, we acquired SG Analytics, a leading provider of AI-powered insights and contextual analytics services.

For more information, please visit our Website: https://www.straive.com/

Equal Opportunity Employer

Straive is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran, or disability status.

📌 AI Architect/Tech Lead (Bengaluru)
🏢 Straive
📍 Bengaluru