Staff Architect
Location: Houston, TX
This is a 4 month assignment with potential to extend
Houston, local OR be able to travel to Houston, TX to be at customer site every other week for a 4-5days/week
Company Overview
Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We''re all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.
We've earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.
Position Overview
We're looking for a Staff Architect to lead the design and delivery of complex, multi-domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who can define technical strategy, own end-to-end architecture for major engagements, and provide technical leadership across teams.
In this role, you will work as a delivery-embedded technical leader on cross-functional teams, defining architecture across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads. You'll act as a technical escalation point on complex challenges, mentor mid-level engineers, partner with leadership on technical direction, and ensure systems are scalable, secure, and built to last.
Why This Role Matters
At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.
Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.
What You'll Do
Craft & Delivery
- Define technical strategy and lead architectural design across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems for end-to-end engagements
- Architect scalable cloud-native solutions, including multi-cloud and hybrid strategies (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes)
- Design data architectures including warehouses, data lakes, and pipelines for batch and streaming workloads (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka)
- Design AI/ML systems including model serving, MLOps pipelines, feature stores, and LLM-based applications (e.g., SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face)
- Define infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and DevOps standards across engagements (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions)
- Drive performance, scalability, cost, and reliability optimization across deployed systems
- Ensure architecture meets security, governance, and compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2)
- Lead cloud migrations and platform modernization initiatives
- Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace
Collaboration & Communication
- Partner with leadership and clients on technical direction, translating business goals into architectural decisions
- Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to engineering and non-engineering stakeholders alike
- Engage closely with engineering, data, AI, and product teams to align architecture with broader business priorities
- Develop and maintain architecture documentation, standards, and guidelines
Leadership & Influence
- Establish architectural standards and best practices that lift quality and consistency across the team
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, helping them grow their architectural thinking and craft
- Act as a technical escalation point on complex architectural and integration challenges
- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend tools, frameworks, and patterns that improve architecture over time
What You'll Bring
- 7+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 3 years in architecture or technical leadership roles
- Deep expertise in cloud platforms and cloud-native architectures (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Strong background in microservices, serverless, containers, and event-driven systems (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Lambda, EventBridge)
- Proficiency with infrastructure as code and CI/CD (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, GitHub Actions)
- Strong data architecture expertise across relational, NoSQL, and big data systems (e.g., PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka)
- Hands-on experience with data modeling, ETL/ELT pipelines, and orchestration (e.g., Airflow, Prefect, dbt)
- Strong experience designing AI/ML systems for production, including LLMs, MLOps, and model serving (e.g., SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow)
- Solid understanding of networking, security, identity, and access management in cloud environments
- Experience with governance, compliance, and observability frameworks
- Strong software engineering skills (Python, APIs, containerization)
- Demonstrated leadership and technical mentoring experience
- Strong stakeholder communication skills, with the ability to translate technical depth across audiences
- Demonstrable usage of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor
- Multi-cloud architecture experience, AI ethics or responsible AI experience, or enterprise architecture certifications (e.g., TOGAF, AWS/Azure/GCP) is a plus
You'll Do Well Here if You Are
- A doer. You see something broken and fix it. You''d rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.
- A fast learner who knows you don''t know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You''re senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.
- Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You''d rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.
- Obsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don''t put your name on work you wouldn''t stand behind.
- Built for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.
- All in. You treat clients'' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.
- Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don''t slow you down. They sharpen you.
- Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.