Principal AI Platform Architect
Qualys
Foster City, CA · Posted June 26, 2026
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Where Foster City, CA ranks
Where Foster City, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for pay after cost of living$209k · of 100
- #1Best cities for pay after cost of living in the West Coast$209k · of 39
- #1Best cities for pay after cost of living in California$209k · of 32
- #1Best cities for director and executive jobs in the West Coast38% · of 71
- #1Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living$232k · of 28
- #1Best cities for technology pay after cost of living$209k · of 80
Rankings about data & analytics jobs
- Best cities for data and analytics jobs #1 New York (1,713 openings)
- Best cities for data and analytics pay after cost of living #1 Foster ($232k)
- Most requested AI skills in data and analytics jobs #1 Machine learning engineering (17.1%)
- AI tools named most often in data and analytics jobs #1 Databricks (7.6%)
- Employers with the most data and analytics jobs #1 Amazon (711 roles)
Data & Analytics jobs · Top Data & Analytics employers · All rankings
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among computer occupations, all other, AI is already used for a large share of the tasks. Measured exposure for computer occupations, all other: 31% (high).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
Come work at a place where innovation and teamwork come together to support the most exciting missions in the world!
About the Role
You will define and lead the reference architecture for third-party AI products within IT, enabling secure, scalable agentic capabilities and accelerating enterprise-wide AI adoption. In this role, you will design, scope, and implement complex AI workflows, operating at the intersection of business operations, AI workflow design, data architecture, enterprise integration, data orchestration, and change management.
You will own the end-to-end design and build of a modern lake house and AI ecosystem—powering intelligent automation, advanced analytics, and global-scale AI use cases. This includes working across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, while ensuring solutions are secure, reliable, scalable, and aligned with real-world clinical and administrative processes. You bring a hands-on mindset, driving outcomes across architecture, engineering, and platform leadership.
What You’ll Do
• Own the architectural vision, principles, and guardrails for AI-first capabilities, including agent orchestration, runtime hosting, model gateways, retrieval/grounding, and enterprise integrations.
• Define reference architectures for agentic runtimes, tool integration, policy enforcement, identity, and secure data access in production.
• Drive non-functional requirements (reliability, performance, cost efficiency, scalability) and establish SLOs and validation approaches.
• Translate business and operational requirements into scalable AI flow architectures that are grounded in customer context and AI best practices.
• Develop and optimize data ingestion, transformation, and orchestration pipelines across diverse enterprise systems
• Establish data models, governance standards, lineage, and data quality frameworks
• Enable AI readiness through structured data access, feature pipelines, and embedding/vector capabilities
• Design and implement secure, compliant, and scalable cloud-based data infrastructure
• Build APIs and reusable platform services for downstream AI and application teams
• Partner with engineering and business teams to translate requirements into robust data solutions
• Contribute to foundational MLOps/LLMOps readiness (pipeline standardization, monitoring, lifecycle considerations)
What We’re Looking For
Required Qualifications
• 15+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or data architecture
• Deep expertise in distributed systems and cloud-native design, with strong knowledge of modern AI architectures (LLM serving, RAG, agentic orchestration)
• Experience building production AI systems with strong observability, reliability engineering, and cost controls
• Proven track record of building or transforming enterprise-scale data platforms / lakehouse architectures
• Strong hands-on expertise in: • Data pipelines (batch and streaming)
• Distributed data processing systems
• Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Experience with data modeling, governance, lineage, and quality frameworks
• Excellent executive communication skills, with the ability to drive decisions under ambiguity
• Hands-on architectural credibility, with the ability to go deep when needed and guide teams from concept to production
• Strong programming skills (Python, SQL, or equivalent)
• Solid understanding of security, access control, and enterprise data management principles
Preferred Qualifications (Value-Adding Prior Experience)
• Experience supporting or enabling AI/ML or GenAI workloads
• Familiarity with vector databases, embeddings, or feature engineering pipelines
• Exposure to event-driven or real-time data architectures
• Experience working within complex enterprise application ecosystems (CRM, ERP, HR, integrations, etc.)
• Prior experience in product-based, high-scale, or global environments
Why Join Us
• Opportunity to build the enterprise data and AI foundation from scratch
• High-impact, high-visibility role influencing long-term strategy
• Work on scalable, real-world AI enablement
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The salary range for this position is $185,000 - $220,000 per year. Final compensation will be determined based on several factors, including but not limited to skills, relevant experience, and work location. Please note this range reflects base salary and does not include incentive compensation or potential equity grants. We also offer a comprehensive and highly competitive benefits package.
Qualys is an Equal Opportunity Employer, please see our EEO policy.