The Role

We’re hiring a Principal AI Architect who builds, codes, and teaches. This is a senior individual contributor role, responsible for shaping how software is designed, built, and delivered in an AI-first environment — where agents and developers work together as part of a single system.

You’ll own the architectural direction for our AI capabilities — including RAG pipelines, LLM integrations, agentic orchestration, and shared platform patterns — and work in close partnership with Engineering Leads and senior developers to ensure designs align with existing systems or are evolved deliberately. Architecture without execution is just opinion, so you’ll validate decisions by writing production code, building reference implementations, and pairing directly with engineers.

AI is not a silo here. It’s a force multiplier across the platform. This role helps the team move faster and more confidently by changing how software is built, not just by adding AI features. 

What You’ll Do

AI Architecture & Platform Design

• Own and drive the architectural      direction for AI across the platform, including RAG pipelines, LLM      integration patterns, agentic orchestration, shared AI services, and model      selection.
• Work peer to peer with Engineering      Leads and senior developers to align AI designs with existing      architecture.
• Deliberately evolve shared patterns      where needed, avoiding rewrites and disruption.
• Make explicit architectural tradeoffs,      including build vs buy decisions, balancing innovation with reliability,      security, scalability, cost, and regulatory requirements.

Hands-On Development & Validation

• Write production-quality      code to validate architectural decisions and create leverage —      establishing shared agent patterns, tooling, and workflows that multiply      the effectiveness of the engineering team.
• Build and maintain reference      implementations that serve as canonical examples for the engineering team.
• Pair directly with engineers across      backend and frontend code paths to prove designs in real implementations,      resolve edge cases, and remove ambiguity before patterns are broadly      adopted.

AI-First Engineering Practices

• Set the bar for AI-first engineering,      demonstrating how AI meaningfully changes design, implementation, testing,      and iteration — not just productivity.
• Co-design agentic development      workflows with engineers, product managers, and designers where AI      operates as a parallel collaborator alongside human developers.
• Define and institutionalize practical      AI development patterns (prompting, retrieval strategies, evaluation, non-deterministic      testing) with the explicit goal of improving engineering velocity and      consistency.

What We’re Looking For

• Proven experience operating as a      senior or principal level individual contributor, owning architecture and      production systems through judgment, not hierarchy.
• Experience designing systems where AI      agents are part of the development process itself — not just runtime      features — including prompt design, tool interfaces, and evaluation      strategies
• Strong backend engineering depth (Java      / Spring Boot and/or Python), with a consistent track record of writing      and reviewing production quality code.
• Hands-on experience building and      shipping AI powered systems in production, including LLM integration and      retrieval-based architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to guide teams      toward AI-first development, including selecting appropriate AI assisted      tools and defining workflows that improve how software is built.
• Sound architectural judgment, with      comfort making and defending tradeoffs across speed, quality, security,      scalability, cost, and compliance.

Technical Environment

• Core Application Stack: Java,      Spring / Spring Boot, Tomcat, React, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
• AI & LLM Platform: AWS      Bedrock, OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus)
• Retrieval & AI Architecture:      Custom RAG pipeline with embeddings and vector search (Milvus / Zilliz)
• Cloud & Data Infrastructure:      AWS (Aurora PostgreSQL, S3, CloudWatch, IAM)
• Developer Tooling & Workflow:      GitHub, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Copilot Enterprise, OpenAI Codex, Claude      Code

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary range: $175,000 – $210,000      (commensurate with experience)
• Comprehensive benefits package
• Flexible PTO
• Opportunity to shape AI strategy in      healthcare and education

About Amplifire

Amplifire is a rapid growth private equity-backed company headquartered in Boulder, CO and operating virtually with talent across the country. Amplifire offers customers an advanced learning platform built on breakthroughs in brain science, AI, and machine learning. It detects and corrects knowledge gaps and misinformation that exist in the minds of all humans. It allows people to master faster, retain longer and perform better.

Amplifire is on a mission to transform how people learn and retain knowledge across high-stakes industries—healthcare, accounting, professional services, government, and education. We’ve helped millions of learners reduce errors, improve outcomes, and boost engagement.