Pre Sales AI Architect

Company Description

Version 1 has celebrated over 28 years in Technology Services and continues to be trusted by global brands to deliver solutions that drive customer success. Our expertise enables our customers to navigate the rapidly changing Digital-First world we live in. We foster strong partnerships with leading technology giants including Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Red Hat, OutSystems, Snowflake, ensuring that our customers are provided with the highest quality solutions and services.

We’re an award‑winning employer reflecting how our employees are at the very heart of Version 1 and what we do:

• UK & Ireland\’s premier AWS, Microsoft & Oracle partner
• 3300+ strong, €350/£300m revenue business
• 10+ years as a Great Place to Work in Ireland & UK
• Best Workplace for Women in the UK & Ireland by GPTW
• Best Workplace for Wellbeing in the UK by GPTW

We’re a core values driven company, we hire people who share our values, and we reward those who display and foster them, it’s deeply embedded within our DNA. Invest in us and we’ll invest in you!

Role Overview

As a Pre‑Sales AI Architect, you will play a pivotal role in identifying, shaping, and securing new AI opportunities by bridging the gap between complex customer challenges and transformative, AI‑powered solutions. A core part of this role is leading high‑quality bid responses for tenders seeking AI solution partners, ensuring our proposals are compelling, technically robust, and commercially sound. You will also be responsible for scoping AI delivery work, defining effort, approach, and activities that set projects up for success.

This highly consultative role requires a strong blend of technical expertise, business acumen, and written communication excellence. You will work closely with clients, account teams, and delivery leads to understand customer needs, craft persuasive AI solution narratives, and differentiate our offering during competitive tenders.

You are expected to act as a trusted advisor to both internal teams and client stakeholders, translating real‑world challenges into scalable AI architectures that demonstrate tangible business value. Your work will directly support sales growth by shaping solution designs, estimating effort and risk, producing high‑quality tender responses, and ensuring our proposals are both innovative and deliverable.

Key Responsibilities

1. Shape and Scope AI Solutions in Response to Client Needs

• Engage with client stakeholders to uncover pain points, business drivers, and opportunities for AI‑powered transformation.
• Conduct discovery sessions and assessments to define business requirements and align them with AI use cases.
• Lead early scoping activities, including defining delivery phases, resource profiles, timelines, assumptions, and risks for proposed AI projects.

2. Design and Propose AI Architectures

• Translate client requirements into scalable, cloud‑based AI architectures that balance technical feasibility, business value, and delivery risk.
• Propose end‑to‑end AI/ML solutions—including model design, data pipelines, MLOps, and platform integration—tailored to each opportunity.
• Collaborating with delivery and engineering leads to validate feasibility, identify dependencies, and align design with execution capability.

3. Write and Lead AI Bid Responses

• Own the technical response for AI‑related RFPs, RFIs, and procurement tenders, including:
  • Detailed solution overviews and architecture descriptions
  • Technical narratives and approach justification
  • Delivery methodology and project structure
  • Clear scope, assumptions, estimates, and risk management
• Craft persuasive, well‑structured bid content that highlights our expertise, solution differentiation, and alignment with tender requirements.
• Act as the technical conscience of the bid, balancing ambition with deliverability.

4. Articulate Value, Outcomes, and Innovation

• Demonstrate how proposed AI solutions will improve business performance, reduce costs, or unlock new capabilities.
• Present complex technical solutions in simple, compelling terms to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Highlight innovation opportunities and ensure proposals showcase thought leadership and credibility.

5. Track Industry Trends and Use Cases

• Stay ahead of market trends in Generative AI, Responsible AI, and emerging industry applications.
• Advise internal teams on how evolving technologies (e.g. vector databases, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering) can strengthen future bid responses and solution designs.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in pre‑sales, tender response writing, or client‑facing architecture roles involving AI, data science, or analytics.
• Demonstrated ability to write high‑quality bid responses for complex technology or AI solution tenders.
• Strong capability to scope AI/ML delivery work, including estimating effort, planning phases, and defining delivery models.
• Ability to elicit business needs and convert them into AI/ML solution designs in cloud environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP).
• Deep technical understanding of AI/ML concepts: supervised and unsupervised learning, GenAI, LLMs, embeddings, MLOps, vector search.
• Experience designing AI solutions using tools such as Azure ML, AWS SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, Databricks, LangChain, and Hugging Face.
• Ability to develop architecture artefacts (e.g., HLDs), technical narratives, effort estimates, and proposal content.
• Exceptional storytelling, writing, and presentation skills; able to build confidence with senior business and technical stakeholders.
• Experience working in bid teams or alongside account executives, ideally within a consultancy, systems integrator, or AI solution provider.
• Understanding of data governance, security, and ethical AI practices.
• Ability to adapt solutions across multiple sectors (e.g., public sector, utilities, finance, health) is a strong advantage.

Additional Information

Why Version 1?

At Version 1 we believe in providing our employees with a comprehensive benefits package that prioritises their wellbeing, professional growth, and financial stability.

• Share in our success with our Quarterly Performance‑Related Profit Share Scheme, where employees collectively benefit from a share of our company\’s profits.
• Strong Career Progression & mentorship coaching through our Strength in Balance & Leadership schemes with a dedicated quarterly Pathways Career Development programme.
• Flexible/remote working – Version 1 is tremendously understanding of life events and people’s individual circumstances and offers flexibility to help achieve a healthy work‑life balance.
• Financial Wellbeing initiatives including Pension, Private Healthcare Cover, Life Assurance, Financial advice and an Employee Discount scheme.
• Employee Wellbeing schemes including Gym Discounts, Bike to Work, Fitness classes, Mindfulness Workshops, Employee Assistance Programme and much more. Generous holiday allowance, enhanced maternity/paternity leave, marriage/civil partnership leave and special leave policies.
• Educational assistance, incentivised certifications, and accreditations, including AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Red Hat.
• Reward schemes including Version 1’s Annual Excellence Awards & ‘Call‑Out’ platform.
• Environment, Social and Community First initiatives allow you to get involved in local fundraising and development opportunities as part of fostering our diversity, inclusion and belonging schemes.

And many more exciting benefits… drop us a note to find out more.