AI Solution Architect

Contract Duration: 6 months initial (with a view to extend)

Day Rate: Up to £630 per day (Inside IR35)

Location: Edinburgh (Hybrid - 2 days per week on-site)

About the Opportunity

Norton Blake is partnering with an established consulting practice to secure an experienced Data & AI Solutions Architect for a high-impact, enterprise-scale programme. In this pivotal position, you will lead the architectural design of scalable, resilient, and highly secure data and artificial intelligence platforms, bridging commercial requirements with modern engineering execution. Operating across a cutting-edge Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ecosystem, you will drive strategic initiatives spanning Machine Learning, LLMOps, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic AI, and large-scale cloud migrations. If you are a consultative technical leader who excels at shaping platform direction, navigating architectural governance, and designing modern data solutions, this engagement provides an outstanding opportunity.

What You Will Be Doing

• Strategy & Architecture Design: Define end-to-end architectures for AI, ML, data, and agentic AI solutions running on GCP, ensuring consistent alignment with platform standards, security controls, and ethical AI practices.
• Cloud-Native Technical Leadership: Architect secure, high-performance workloads using GCP services including Vertex AI, BigQuery, Cloud Run, GKE, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage, Looker, and Cloud Composer.
• Enterprise Integration & Security: Design robust API and service integration patterns utilising Istio service mesh and Apigee, implementing enterprise AuthN/AuthZ mechanisms such as OIDC, IAM roles, and workload identities.
• Platform & Infrastructure Design: Apply deep expertise in Kubernetes, service mesh, ingress configurations, and network security boundaries to create resilient hosting environments.
• Governance & Collaboration: Represent technical direction within formal governance bodies (including ARC and AWG), translating business needs into actionable high-level designs in close collaboration with data science, engineering, and commercial teams.

What We Are Looking For

• Cloud Architecture Depth: Proven track record architecting enterprise solutions on major cloud platforms, with significant expertise in GCP (or cross-exposure with Azure).
• Data & AI Expertise: Comprehensive understanding of modern data architecture, Machine Learning lifecycles, and large-scale data migration patterns (prior experience with ETL toolsets or DataStage decommissioning paths is highly beneficial).
• Generative & Agentic AI: Demonstrated ability to design orchestrations and technical patterns for LLM-based systems, RAG, and agentic AI workflows.
• Communication & Stakeholder Management: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to articulate architectural trade-offs, defend design decisions, and align multi-disciplinary teams.
• Financial Services Exposure: Prior background operating within banking, financial services, or heavily regulated enterprise environments is beneficial.

Beneficial Experience

• Hands-on experience with Vertex AI or equivalent model lifecycle tooling.
• Practical familiarity with orchestration frameworks such as LangChain or LangGraph.
• Knowledge of multi-cloud architectures (GCP, Azure, AWS) and event-driven architectural patterns.

Why Join This Project?

This contract offers the opportunity to steer flagship artificial intelligence and data initiatives for a major enterprise client in Edinburgh. With an initial 6 month term and an extensive pipeline of work, this role delivers substantial technical autonomy, exposure to production-grade Generative AI, and high probability of contract extension.