Software Architect (m/f/x) - Focus: AI Architecture

The appliedAI Initiative elevates Europe’s industry to become shapers in the age of AI, creating a future that we desire to live in. Through our ecosystem of strong partners, comprehensive programs, services and solutions we advance companies holistically on their AI journey. With our uniquely diverse, interdisciplinary, and driven team, we build on deep technical expertise while specializing in the applicability of the solutions. We share a mindset of collaboration and openness with our ecosystem of leading companies and tech players. Our common goal is to strengthen the European landscape, jointly creating unique knowledge for applying trustworthy AI.

As a Software Architect with a focus on AI Architecture in Professional Services, you design code-first architectures and guide teams to deliver production AI systems for enterprise clients. The emphasis is on robust, end-to-end solutions.

• Define system, data, and deployment architectures (APIs, microservices, event-driven systems, streaming/batch pipelines).
• Establish standards, patterns, and guardrails; produce high-quality reference implementations and templates.
• Architect LLM/ML solutions (RAG, retrieval/vector search, orchestration) with rigorous evaluation and safety.
• Design MLOps foundations (model packaging/serving, registries, CI/CD, rollout/rollback) for reproducibility.
• Engineer for SLOs/SLAs: reliability, latency, cost efficiency, observability, and resilience—cloud and on-prem.
• Lead architecture reviews, threat modeling, and readiness checks; ensure compliance and data governance.
• Work closely with customers in discovery and delivery to translate requirements into scalable designs.
• Be hands-on: contribute code, diagrams, and documentation; unlock critical technical blockers.

• STEM degree (preferably Computer Science).
• 5–8+ years designing and building production-grade software; experience in client-facing delivery or consulting.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals; proficiency in Python plus one of C, C++, Go, Java, or TypeScript/Node.js or other.
• Expertise in distributed systems, APIs/microservices, messaging (Kafka/Pub/Sub), and data storage (Postgres, S3/Blob).
• Cloud-native and on-prem experience: Docker, Kubernetes, Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/Pulumi), CI/CD.
• MLOps architecture experience (vLLM/Triton/ONNX, MLflow/W&B) and monitoring/drift detection.
• Security and privacy awareness (SSO/IAM, secrets, audit logging, data governance; EU AI Act awareness).
• Excellent communication and documentation (ADRs, diagrams); ability to mentor engineers.
• Fluent English, fluent German is a plus.

A highly qualified and motivated team of ~90 people on a journey to change the rapidly evolving European AI Landscape. 

• Experience the best of both worlds with our hybrid work model: You can choose to work from our vibrant offices - either at the IPAI in Heilbronn or the House of Communication in Munich - while also enjoying the flexibility to work remotely a few days each week
• Opportunity to shape a variety of projects and the development of new, original content based on the latest developments in AI and its adoption in businesses
• An atmosphere that encourages to think and experiment in new ways with software, hardware, and processes
• Hottest topics of the next decade and freedom and trust to initiate own activities
• A highly visible initiative that helps you build a large and high-level network of start-ups, partners, and tech companies
• Sports membership with Wellpass to access thousands of sports facilities all over Germany (and beyond)
• JobRad leasing option
• You can take a sabbatical of up to 3 months after 3 years of employment - because sometimes 30 vacation days are not enough to explore the beauty of this world.

Lucas Fernandes - Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist
appliedAI Initiative GmbH, August-Everding-Str. 25, 81671 München