Lead Platform Architect (AI)

Job Summary
We are seeking a highly experienced Lead Platform Architect (AI/ML) to define and drive the enterprise technology vision for a leading airline. This role is responsible for translating business strategy into scalable, secure, and future-ready architecture across operational, customer, and enterprise platforms.
The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in enterprise architecture, event-driven and microservices-based system design, modernization of legacy aviation platforms, and cloud-native engineering. In addition to core architecture leadership, the role requires strong exposure to AI/ML-driven innovation, enabling data-led decision-making, operational optimization, and intelligent automation across airline functions such as crew, network operations, maintenance, and customer experience.
You will work closely with business leaders, engineering teams, product owners, and data scientists to design resilient distributed systems, establish architectural governance, and accelerate the airlines digital and AI transformation journey.
Key Responsibilities
Define and maintain the enterprise architecture roadmap aligned with airline business strategy and operational priorities.
Design and implement event-driven architectures leveraging messaging, streaming, and asynchronous communication to enable real-time operational responsiveness.
Lead the adoption of microservices architecture, ensuring domain-driven decomposition, service autonomy, scalability, and independent deployment.
Develop integration strategies using APIs, event streams, and service meshes to enable seamless interoperability across mission-critical airline systems.
Drive modernization of legacy monolithic systems into cloud-native, loosely coupled, and highly observable platforms.
Establish architecture governance, standards, reusable frameworks, and design blueprints across engineering teams.
Apply proven software design patterns (e.g., Saga, CQRS, Circuit Breaker, Retry, Strangler, Adapter, Domain-Driven Design) to build resilient and maintainable distributed systems.
Design secure, highly available, and performance-optimized systems capable of handling real-time airline operations.
Collaborate with engineering teams to ensure architecture is implemented effectively through DevOps, CI/CD, and automated observability practices.
Enable data-driven architecture by designing robust data platforms, streaming pipelines, and integration ecosystems.
Identify and implement AI/ML-enabled use cases such as predictive maintenance, disruption management, crew optimization, personalization, and intelligent automation.
Partner with Data Science and Analytics teams to operationalize machine learning models into production environments (MLOps enablement).
Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and architectural oversight to architects and senior engineers across programs.
Evaluate emerging technologies and create adoption strategies that deliver measurable business value.
Ensure compliance with security, regulatory, and aviation reliability requirements.
Translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes for executive stakeholders.
Required Skills And Qualifications
8+ years of experience in technology, with significant experience in Enterprise / Solution Architecture roles.
Strong hands-on experience designing microservices-based distributed systems using REST/gRPC, containerization, and orchestration platforms.
Proven expertise in event-driven architecture, including messaging, pub-sub models, streaming platforms, and eventual consistency patterns.
Deep understanding of enterprise integration patterns and distributed system design.
Demonstrated experience applying design patterns and architectural principles to solve scalability, resiliency, and maintainability challenges.
Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and hybrid-cloud transformation.
Experience designing high-availability, mission-critical platforms with strong resilience and disaster recovery strategies.
Solid knowledge of data architecture, data lakes/warehouses, and real-time analytics ecosystems.
Familiarity with DevOps, CI/CD, observability, and SRE-driven reliability models.
Ability to align business capabilities with technology investments and architecture roadmaps.
Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills across business and technical audiences.
Strong leadership mindset with experience guiding cross-functional engineering teams.