Solution Architect — Data & AI Platform

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Solution Architect — Data & AI Platform based in Saudi Arabia. This senior contract opportunity is designed for an experienced architect passionate about the intersection of modern data platforms and artificial intelligence. You will shape AI-ready data capabilities on a modern Databricks Lakehouse foundation, enabling advanced analytics and intelligent applications. The role spans LLM-powered analytics, conversational AI, agentic workflows, governed data products, semantic layers, metadata intelligence, and RAG. You will establish scalable architecture patterns that connect high-quality, governed data with emerging AI capabilities. The position combines strategic architecture leadership with hands-on technical design across data, AI, governance, and platform engineering. You will help define standards that improve data discoverability, reliability, security, and usability for both people and AI systems. This remote contract role is suited to a highly experienced professional comfortable driving complex technology initiatives in a modern cloud environment. Define and drive the overall Data and AI platform architecture using Databricks, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and modern lakehouse design patterns. Develop scalable architecture patterns that enable AI-ready data products, governed analytics, and enterprise AI use cases. Architect secure LLM and Generative AI enablement capabilities, including RAG, embeddings, vector search, semantic search, prompt orchestration, model serving, grounding, and AI evaluation. Design agentic AI capabilities that can support data platform operations, including metadata discovery, catalog enrichment, lineage analysis, and data quality investigations. Enable AI-assisted documentation generation, pipeline troubleshooting, automated test generation, and operational runbook support. Establish architecture standards for governed data products, certified metrics, semantic layers, and consistent business definitions. Define approaches for integrating metadata intelligence and semantic context into AI-driven analytics and data experiences. Establish secure, scalable, and maintainable patterns for deploying data and AI capabilities across the platform. Collaborate with engineering, data, AI, and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into practical architecture solutions. Promote modern engineering practices, including automation and CI/CD, to support reliable delivery and continuous improvement of data and AI platforms. Requirements: 10+ years of professional experience in solution architecture, data architecture, platform engineering, or closely related technology roles. Strong experience designing modern data platforms, preferably using Databricks, Delta Lake, and Unity Catalog . Solid understanding of lakehouse architecture, data governance, metadata management, data products, and semantic modeling. Practical knowledge of AI/GenAI architecture patterns, including LLMs, RAG, embeddings, vector search, semantic search, model serving, grounding, and AI evaluation . Experience designing or enabling agentic AI workflows , particularly for data discovery, lineage, quality, documentation, troubleshooting, or platform operations. Strong SQL skills and familiarity with modern data engineering and analytics ecosystems. Experience with CI/CD practices and automation for data and AI platform development and deployment. Ability to design secure and scalable architectures that balance innovation, governance, performance, and maintainability. Strong understanding of data quality, lineage, metadata, business definitions, and governed metrics. Excellent analytical, communication, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to explain sophisticated technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. Ability to operate at a strategic level while remaining