AI Architect in Southampton

Are you passionate about driving innovation and best practices in Artificial Intelligence? We have an exciting opportunity for you – AI Architect!

Careers at TCS: It means more. TCS is a purpose-led transformation company, built on belief. We do not just help businesses to transform through technology. We support them in making a meaningful difference to the people and communities they serve - our clients include some of the biggest brands in the UK and worldwide. For you, it means more to make an impact that matters, through challenging projects which demand ambitious innovation and thought leadership.

Drive data integrity, governance, and responsible AI adoption. Work with cutting‑edge digital and AI platforms. Enable automation, intelligence, and smarter decision‑making at enterprise scale.

The Role: As an AI Architect (Enterprise & Agentic Systems), you will define the AI architectural vision and shape the enterprise AI strategy and roadmap, ensuring AI solutions are scalable, secure, well‑governed, and aligned with business outcomes. You will translate business opportunities into pragmatic AI architectures across data, models, platforms, and integrations, enabling reliable delivery at enterprise scale. You will work within a supportive, inclusive, and collaborative community across data, engineering, security, and product teams. You will guide delivery teams on AI patterns and best practices, including MLOps, LLMOps, evaluation, monitoring, and responsible AI. You will influence stakeholders through evidence‑based architectural recommendations and help deliver AI capabilities that can be operated safely over time.

Key responsibilities:

• Architect and govern multi-agent and agent-swarm systems at enterprise scale.
• Define agent safety, governance, observability, and testing standards.
• Establish AI guardrails, frameworks, governance models, and safety controls.
• Design human-in-the-loop optimisation to balance autonomy, reliability, and performance.
• Own patterns for agent reliability, performance tuning, and failure handling.
• Build and sustain an AI-first engineering culture across full-stack, platform, and SRE teams.
• Act as the final decision-maker for complex system design and enterprise-level architecture decisions.
• Mentor architects and senior engineers on AI-native and agent-based design principles.
• Design and govern enterprise-scale distributed systems with embedded AI capabilities.
• Architect and evolve agent orchestration platforms.
• Own observability, reliability, security, scalability, performance, and cost management (FinOps).
• Ensure platforms are production-ready, secure, auditable, and compliant.
• Partner with CTOs and senior leadership on AI architecture strategy and roadmaps.
• Define long-term enterprise AI architecture blueprints.
• Own agent lifecycle planning and roadmaps from pilots to scale and retirement.
• Drive transformation from traditional SDLC to AI-native and agent-augmented development.
• Define patterns for spec-driven development, AI-assisted architecture extraction, drift detection, and AI-driven testing.
• Ensure AI is embedded across the entire software engineering lifecycle.
• Integrate SRE, SLOs, DevSecOps, Software Engineering, and Observability into a unified AI platform model.
• Define reliability targets, operational metrics, and incident-management practices.
• Ensure operational excellence and continuous compliance.
• Own end-to-end AI lifecycle including model and agent selection, deployment, monitoring, governance, versioning, upgrades, and decommissioning.
• Establish standards for MLOps, AgentOps, and AI governance.
• Act as a business and portfolio SME for AI architecture.
• Baseline organisational AI skills, capabilities, and maturity, and define uplift roadmaps.
• Translate AI architecture into clear business value narratives.
• Support RFPs, solution design, and executive workshops.

Your Profile

Essential skills/knowledge/experience:

• Proven experience in enterprise architecture, platform engineering, or solution architecture within complex, large‑scale environments.
• Demonstrated track record designing and operating enterprise‑grade distributed systems.
• Strong exposure to AI and GenAI platforms, including agent‑based and agentic architectures.
• Practical experience applying AI and intelligent automation safely at enterprise scale.
• Deep understanding of DevSecOps and SRE practices, including reliability engineering and observability.
• Proven experience partnering with CTOs, CIOs, and senior business leaders to shape strategy and drive delivery.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast‑moving environments, bringing clarity and structure to complex challenges.
• A strong commitment to continuous learning and emerging technologies, fostering a culture of innovation and rigour.

Rewards & Benefits

TCS is consistently voted a Top Employer in the UK and globally. Our competitive salary packages feature pension, health care, life assurance, laptop, phone, access to extensive training resources and discounts within the larger Tata network. We offer health & wellness initiatives and sports events; we are the proud sponsor of the London Marathon.

Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing

Tata Consultancy Services UK&I is committed to meeting the accessibility needs of all individuals in accordance with the UK Equality Act 2010 and the UK Human Rights Act 1998. We welcome and embrace diversity in race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, neurodiversity, gender identity, age, physical ability, gender reassignment, sexual orientation. We are a disability inclusive employer and encourage disabled people to apply for this role. As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer an interview to applicants with disabilities or long-term conditions who meet the minimum criteria for the role.

Next Steps:

Application Process Online application: You can apply directly through LinkedIn/ by uploading your CV. In case you wish to submit your application via another format like audio/video, please, contact. Skill-Based discussion: This will be a level 1 interview with the project team, it can be via video or in-person. Details will be confirmed by your recruiter. Managerial discussion: This discussion will focus on behavioural aspects and person-organisation fit. HR Discussion: This will be with one of the members of the HR team and will cover your career journey, aspirations for growth, compensation and any other questions you may have.

Join us and do more of what matters. Apply online now.