Senior AI Architect - Forward Deployed Engineer Lead - Remote / Telecommute

Job Title: Senior AI Architect - Forward Deployed Engineer Lead - Remote / Telecommute

Job Location: Mahwah, NJ

Job Type: Contract

Pay Range: $70.00hr - $75.00hr

Job Overview:

The AI CoE Pod Lead is a hands-on builder who designs, ships, and runs Claude skills, plugins, and agent apps for the organization s internal business teams, while acting as the technical lead for the Pod s Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs). Roughly 50-60% of the role involves building and deploying; the remainder focuses on technical guidance, design review, and stakeholder alignment.

Must Have Skills:

• Claude (skills, plugins, MCP servers/connectors), LLM-based applications.

Key Responsibilities:

Build and ship (hands-on):

• Design, write, and iterate Claude skills (SKILL.md instructions, scripts, templates, reference assets) that encode business team workflows and produce reliable, repeatable outputs.
• Package skills, commands, sub-agents, hooks, and MCP connectors into plugins that internal teams can install and use with minimal setup.
• Build agent apps on the Claude API and Agent SDK where a workflow needs orchestration, state, scheduling, or integration beyond a skill.
• Build and maintain MCP servers and connectors to systems (CRM, ticketing, document stores, data platforms) with least-privilege access.
• Write evaluation suites for each skill and agent (golden datasets, regression tests, output-quality rubrics) and use them to gate releases.
• Own the release path for skills and plugins: version control, code review, CI/CD, environment promotion, and rollback.
• Manage distribution and access through the organization s plugin catalog and admin controls, ensuring the right teams obtain the right capabilities.
• Set up monitoring for usage, adoption, quality, latency, and token cost; act on drift and failures.
• Lead the technical side of workstream transitions: take over code and context from incumbent teams, close technical debt and environment gaps, and prepare cutover plans.
• Act as technical lead for the Pod s FDEs: set standards for skill design, prompt and context engineering, testing, and documentation.
• Run design and code reviews; unblock FDEs on complex problems through pairing and reference implementations.
• Maintain a shared library of reusable skill patterns, templates, and connectors to accelerate new builds.
• Decide when a need is best met by a skill, a plugin, an agent app, or a conventional integration, and document the reasoning.
• Work with business owners to translate workflows into clear requirements, success metrics, and PRDs.
• Run discovery and demos; drive UAT with business users and fold feedback into fast iterations.
• Train business teams on using and contributing to skills; build internal champions.
• Prepare the technical evidence for each acceptance criterion: architecture docs and ADRs, UAT results, InfoSec reviews, deployment readiness checklists.
• Partner with InfoSec on data classification, access controls, PII handling, and prompt-injection defenses for skills, connectors, and agents.
• Track and report cost, usage, and value delivered per workstream.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 2+ years building and shipping LLM-based applications to production.
• Hands-on experience building with Claude: skills, plugins, MCP servers/connectors, the Claude API, and tool use; or equivalent depth on a comparable LLM platform with a clear ramp to Claude.
• Strong Python and/or TypeScript skills; proficient with REST APIs, JSON schemas, authentication (OAuth, service accounts), and scripting.
• Working knowledge of agent patterns: tool calling, sub-agents, context management, retrieval, memory, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
• Experience designing LLM evaluations and regression testing for non-deterministic outputs.
• Practical DevOps experience: Git workflows, CI/CD, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform), secrets management, logging, and monitoring.
• 2+ years as a tech lead or player-coach guiding engineers through design reviews and code reviews.
• Proven ability to work directly with non-technical business users, translate workflows into requirements, and execute UAT.
• Sound grasp of AI security and data governance: PII handling, access control, prompt injection, and data-exfiltration risks.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with the Claude Agent SDK, Claude Code, plugin catalogs, and enterprise admin controls.
• Track record of taking over in-flight AI systems from another team and stabilizing them for production.
• Background in domains: EHS, ESG, operational risk, product stewardship, or supply chain risk.
• Experience with enterprise systems commonly connected to agents: Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Snowflake, or Databricks.
• Experience building reusable internal platforms or developer tooling adopted by multiple teams.
• Familiarity with AI governance frameworks (NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001) and SOC 2 controls.
• Experience in a global delivery model with partner or offshore engineering teams.

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• Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Disability Insurance (Short-Term and Long-Term)
• Life and AD&D Insurance
• Paid Sick Leave (where required by applicable state or local law)
• Supplemental Insurance Plans
• Identity Theft Protection
• Pet Insurance
• Employee Wellness Programs
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Career Growth and Professional Development Opportunities