AI Architect

Summary

Guidewire is seeking an AI Architect to join our Professional Services AI Engineering team in Bangalore. You will work horizontally across AI Engineering initiatives, helping blueprint AI features and define the patterns that allow Strike Teams to deliver production-ready AI capabilities. Your primary craft is AI solution architecture — shaping the prompt engineering, harness engineering, RAG, evaluation, observability, and model-selection approach that turns an AI idea into a reliable feature.

You will help teams make data-informed decisions about when to use agentic workflows, direct LLM calls, RAG, classical NLP/NLU, lightweight ML, or model fine-tuning. You will mentor P2/P3 AI engineers, review designs, create reusable patterns, and help the broader team explain AI design choices clearly across Guidewire, SI partners, and customers.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

• AI Feature Blueprinting: Create technical blueprints for AI features, including architecture, data needs, model strategy, evaluation approach, and delivery risks.
• Model Selection: Define patterns for identifying which LLM model should be used for each call, and when to use NLP/NLU instead.
• Harness Architecture: Shape reusable patterns for agent loops, tool/function calling, context construction, memory, structured outputs, retries, and failure handling.
• Prompt Engineering: Set standards for prompt design, versioning, review, experimentation, and regression testing as first-class engineering assets.
• Evaluation: Design eval frameworks, golden datasets, regression suites, error analysis, and LLM-as-judge patterns to measure quality and guide decisions.
• RAG & Knowledge Patterns: Guide document parsing, chunking, embeddings, retrieval, reranking, prompt assembly, and grounded response patterns.
• Mentorship & Enablement: Coach P2/P3 AI engineers, review technical designs, create examples, and help junior engineers present architecture findings clearly.
• Cross-Guidewire Collaboration: Partner with Product, AI CoE, PS, customer teams, and SI partners.

KPIs & Success Metrics

• AI feature blueprints are clear, reusable, and actionable for Strike Teams.
• Model and architecture choices are backed by evals, analysis, and documented trade-offs.
• Prompt, harness, RAG, and evaluation patterns are adopted consistently by P2/P3 engineers.
• Delivered AI features meet project bars for accuracy, groundedness, reliability, latency, and cost.
• Junior and mid-level engineers can implement patterns and explain the results confidently.

Key Skills & Experience

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Machine Learning, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Experience: 8+ years of experience in AI, machine learning, data science, software engineering, or solution architecture.
• AI Architecture: Strong ability to translate ambiguous product or delivery goals into practical AI system designs.
• AI Fundamentals: Deep understanding of LLMs, prompts, embeddings, retrieval, structured outputs, tool use, agentic workflows, and model failure modes.
• NLP/NLU Judgment: Able to recognize when classical NLP/NLU, rules-based approaches, lightweight ML, or structured extraction are better than generative AI.
• Technical Proficiency:
  • Strong Python/Java skills and ability to read, review, and contribute to production-quality code.
  • Experience designing LLM harnesses, including orchestration, tool/function calling, context construction, retries, and fallback behavior.
  • Strong prompt engineering practice, including structured iteration, versioning, evaluation, and regression testing.
  • Working knowledge of RAG patterns, embeddings, retrieval evaluation, and vector search concepts.
  • Comfortable designing evaluation approaches using golden sets, regression suites, error taxonomies, and human review loops.
• Engineering Excellence: Familiar with Git, code review, testing, CI/CD concepts, cloud-based delivery, and production engineering practices.
• Communication & Mentorship: Able to explain complex AI trade-offs clearly and coach less experienced engineers without direct reporting authority.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Agentic AI Systems: Experience with agentic frameworks or custom agent harnesses in production.
• Evals: Experience building structured eval harnesses, regression suites, LLM-as-judge patterns, or production feedback loops.
• Cloud: Hands-on AWS experience with services such as Bedrock, SageMaker, OpenSearch, or related cloud-native AI/data services.
• Fine-Tuning: Experience evaluating or implementing model fine-tuning, distillation, or domain adaptation.
• Guidewire Knowledge: Familiarity with Guidewire products or the insurance domain is a plus.
• Enterprise AI Delivery: Prior experience working on document-heavy, regulated, insurance, finance, or professional services datasets.

About Guidewire

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation.

For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on Twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

Guidewire Software, Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and believe that a diversity of perspectives, abilities, and cultures is a key to our success. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability. All offers are contingent upon passing a criminal history and other background checks where it's applicable to the position.

Guidewire is proud to be a disability inclusive employer. We are committed to providing individualized accommodations and support to candidates for any part of our hiring process. If you think you may need disability-related accommodations, please email EmployAbility at accommodations-gw@employ-ability.org.uk, our disability partner, or schedule a call with an EmployAbility expert (calendar booking slot) for a confidential conversation.