Principal AI Architect

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Lead Architect shaping Edge AI software platform for US government clients. Defining architecture and technical roadmap across distributed engineering teams.

Posted 6/20/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $220,000 - $250,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

CloudDistributed SystemsGrafanaIoTKafkaKubernetesPrometheus

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own the end-to-end architecture of the Edge AI / IoT platform, defining reference designs, component boundaries, data flows, and integration contracts across edge, on-premises, and cloud tiers.
Drive adoption of open standards (MQTT, VSS, OPC-UA, ONVIF, etc.) and NVIDIA ecosystem tooling (CUDA, TensorRT, Jetson, NGC) across the product.
Establish and govern architecture decision records (ADRs), technology radar, and technical roadmap in close collaboration with product management and the CTO.
Identify and mitigate systemic technical risks — latency, bandwidth constraints, model drift, security boundaries — before they become production incidents.
Lead the architecture design to achieve and maintain NIST SP 800-171 compliance, with a clear pathway toward CMMC Level 2 (and Level 3 where required by contracts).
Define zero-trust principles, secure-by-design patterns, cryptographic key management, and supply chain security practices for all platform components.
Collaborate with our compliance and legal teams to produce architecture documentation, system security plans (SSPs), and evidence packages required during government procurement.
Serve as the primary technical mentor for a globally distributed engineering team spanning multiple time zones; run architecture reviews, design sprints, and internal tech talks.
Define and enforce engineering standards: API design, containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD pipeline quality gates, observability, and disaster recovery.
Act as the senior technical point of contact during pre-sales and onboarding with US public sector clients, translating customer mission requirements into platform capabilities.
Participate in government-facing technical evaluations, RFP responses, and architecture briefings — demonstrating deep understanding of federal IT environments.

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in a principal architect, staff engineer, or equivalent technical leadership role.
Proven track record designing large-scale distributed systems with real-time or near-real-time constraints — IoT telemetry pipelines, sensor fusion, or similar.
Deep expertise with MQTT (broker architecture, QoS, retained messages, MQTT over TLS) and at least one complementary messaging/streaming technology (Kafka, AMQP, ROS 2, etc.).
Hands-on experience with the NVIDIA ecosystem: CUDA development, TensorRT optimization, Jetson or similar edge AI hardware, and NVIDIA NGC / Triton Inference Server.
Solid understanding of Vehicle Signal Specification (VSS) or comparable hierarchical signal / data modeling standards for edge device abstraction.
Practical knowledge of NIST SP 800-171 controls and experience translating them into concrete architecture and engineering requirements.
Proficiency in containerized, cloud-native architectures: Kubernetes, Helm, service mesh, GitOps, and modern observability stacks (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana).
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills — able to produce crisp architecture diagrams and documents for both engineering peers and non-technical government stakeholders.
Ability to work effectively across globally distributed teams, exercising influence without direct authority.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Competitive compensation package including base salary, equity, and performance bonus — benchmarked globally.
Flexible, fully remote work environment with async-first culture and periodic team on-sites.
Access to cutting-edge NVIDIA GPU infrastructure for research and development.
Dedicated learning & conference budget, and active participation in industry standards bodies.

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

architecture designdistributed systemsreal-time systemsIoT telemetryMQTTNVIDIA CUDAKubernetescontainerizationCI/CDNIST SP 800-171

Soft Skills

technical leadershipcommunicationcollaborationmentoringinfluence without authorityproblem-solvingdocumentationarchitecture reviewsdesign sprintstechnical presentations

Certifications

CMMC Level 2CMMC Level 3