Practice Head | Advisory Digital | Chief Architect

About the Role

We are seeking a highly experienced Chief Architect who combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership capabilities. This role is for a hands-on professional who codes, prototypes, and leads architectural initiatives from the front. The ideal candidate has successfully managed teams of Enterprise Architects, spearheaded the development of Internal Developer Platforms, driven agentic AI implementations across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), and established automated architecture governance through Architecture as Code in multi-cloud environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and direct a team of Enterprise Architects, mentoring them and guiding architectural decisions.
• Act as the hands-on design authority by coding, prototyping, and creating reference implementations to demonstrate architectural standards.
• Implement and maintain Architecture as Code practices, including coding standards, machine-readable architectures, and automated conformance checks integrated within CI/CD pipelines.
• Oversee Infrastructure as Code using tools like Terraform, Bicep, or Pulumi including policy-as-code automation.
• Build and scale Internal Developer Platforms (IDP), enabling self-service capabilities and golden paths for developers.
• Integrate agentic AI across the entire SDLC, incorporating multi-agent systems and generative AI technologies.
• Ensure vendor-neutral multi-cloud strategies involving Azure, AWS, and GCP with robust containerization and microservices architectures.
• Chair Architecture Review Boards to establish and enforce architectural governance without hampering delivery speed.
• Drive DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices including CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, observability, and security scanning.
• Leverage container technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift in production environments.
• Develop and manage API strategies including API management, gateways, monetization, and service connectivity.
• Design event-driven architectures using platforms like Kafka, Pulsar, Event Hubs, and Pub/Sub.
• Implement comprehensive security and compliance measures including Zero Trust architectures, Identity and Access Management, secrets management, and compliance automation.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Minimum 15 years of professional experience in solution architecture, software engineering, cloud technologies, platform engineering, or artificial intelligence.
• Proven leadership experience at a Managing Director, Head, Director, or VP level position, specifically as a Chief Architect or Head of Architecture.
• Demonstrated experience managing teams of Enterprise Architects and mentoring technical professionals.
• Hands-on technical proficiency including coding and prototyping architectural solutions.
• Extensive expertise with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, Bicep, or Pulumi.
• Solid background in building Internal Developer Platforms that support scalable and self-service developer environments.
• Practical knowledge of agentic AI applications across the full SDLC and generative AI systems.
• Experience working across multiple cloud providers (Azure, AWS, GCP) in a vendor-neutral approach.
• Strong familiarity with container orchestration tools including Kubernetes, Docker, and OpenShift.
• Proven track record in API strategy development, event-driven architecture, and security compliance implementations.
• Educational qualification: B.Tech or B.E. in any specialization.
• Note: Candidates focused solely on strategy consulting, delivery/program management, data/BI architecture, presales, or non-hands-on enterprise architecture roles are not suitable.

Additional Information

This position is available in multiple locations including Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, and Gurugram. The role demands a strong technical leader capable of hands-on contributions and architectural governance. Confidentiality for applicants is assured during the recruitment process. Only candidates matching the specified criteria will be considered.