AI Architect

AI Architect

Location: Coimbra - Hybrid

Employment Type: Permanent

About Loop Future:

Loop Future combines technology, innovation, and sustainability to create digital solutions that shape the future. By integrating software engineering, cloud solutions, Salesforce expertise, and intelligent sourcing, Loop Future connects people, systems, and industries – driving efficiency, growth, and global impact. We are headquartered in Portugal and supported by our international offices in the UK, Switzerland, and India. Our diverse and talented team delivers cutting-edge digital experiences across TV & Media, Satellite & Space, Consultancy, Retail, and many other domains.

About the Role:

We’re looking for an AI Architect to help build and lead our AI practice, shaping our service offering, delivering innovative customer solutions, and growing a high-performing team.

Reporting to the Head of AI Unit, you’ll play a pivotal role in establishing AI as a key capability within our Delivery & Technology group. You’ll combine hands-on AI engineering with customer-facing consultancy, pre-sales, technical leadership, and team development.

Initially, you’ll be heavily involved in customer engagements, understanding business challenges, designing solutions, and personally building AI-powered applications. As demand grows, you’ll increasingly focus on setting standards, overseeing delivery, developing talent, and scaling the practice.

This is an opportunity for someone who enjoys building something from the ground up, thrives in a dynamic environment, and is equally comfortable shaping a solution with senior customer stakeholders and getting hands-on with the technology.

Responsibilities:

• Help define and evolve our AI service offering, from discovery and proof of concept through production delivery and managed services.
• Work with Sales and customers to identify opportunities, lead discovery workshops, and translate business challenges into practical AI solutions.
• Lead the technical aspects of proposals, pitches, and estimates, ensuring solutions are deliverable, commercially sound, and aligned with customer needs.
• Personally design and build AI-powered solutions, including LLM applications, agentic systems, workflow automation, retrieval and knowledge architectures, and enterprise integrations.
• Oversee AI project delivery, ensuring quality, timelines, budgets, and technical standards are maintained while identifying and managing risks.
• Establish standards for AI architecture, engineering quality, agent and prompt design, evaluation, observability, security, governance, and responsible AI use.
• Make pragmatic technology choices across model providers, cloud platforms, agent frameworks, and tooling, balancing innovation with reliability, maintainability, and cost.
• Build reusable accelerators, tools, and playbooks that improve delivery efficiency and support scalable customer solutions.
• Drive AI adoption across Loop Future, helping our technical, delivery, and internal teams use AI to improve software development and business operations.

Requirements:

• Substantial professional experience delivering software, data, or AI projects in a consultancy, technology services, or agency environment.
• Strong hands-on experience with modern AI engineering, including LLM-based applications, agentic systems, retrieval and knowledge architectures, enterprise integrations, and AI evaluation.
• Proven ability to understand customer processes and business needs, design appropriate solutions, and personally build working AI applications.
• Experience leading technical teams, establishing engineering standards, recruiting talent, and developing people.
• Confidence working directly with customers and senior stakeholders, facilitating discovery, communicating technical concepts, and building consensus.
• A pragmatic engineering mindset, balancing innovation with reliability, security, maintainability, cost, and measurable business value.
• Strong ownership, initiative, and the ability to work through ambiguity in a fast-moving environment.
• The ability to distinguish genuine AI capabilities from market hype and advise customers honestly on when AI is — and isn’t — the right solution.
• Fluent written and spoken English, with a willingness to travel.

Nice to have:

• Experience building and scaling an AI practice or developing a new technical service offering.
• Familiarity with enterprise AI governance, security, data residency, intellectual property, and responsible AI.
• Commercial awareness, including project estimation, pricing, utilisation, delivery margins, and ongoing operating costs.
• Experience creating reusable AI accelerators and developing AI capabilities within existing engineering teams.

Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we may not be able to respond to every applicant individually. However, all applications will be carefully considered against both the opportunity applied for and other relevant current or future opportunities across Loop Future. We appreciate your interest in joining us and the time taken to submit your application.