Head of AI Architecture

At Vontobel, AI is moving beyond pilots.

We are building production-grade, regulated, and scalable AI systems — and we are looking for the architecture leader who sets the technical direction behind them.

As Head of AI Architecture, you own the AI architecture across the firm: from LLM- and agent-based solutions to the enterprise platforms, guardrails, and standards that make them work in production.

What would your role be?

• Define, own, and continuously evolve the enterprise AI architecture and lead hands-on delivery of production-grade AI solutions end-to-end.
• Design and build LLM- and agent-based AI systems
• Establish and apply hands-on best practices for LLM and RAG architectures
• Architect scalable, secure, and resilient AI platforms, leveraging distributed and event-driven architectures
• Act as a hands-on architecture leader, mentoring senior engineers, leading architecture and design reviews, and delivering production-ready prototypes and reference implementations.
• Work closely with Product, Security, Risk, Legal/Compliance, and IT, ensuring AI solutions meet regulatory, governance, and model-risk requirements, while leading the AI Developer Guild to raise engineering standards and capability across the organization.

What are we looking for?

• A hands-on senior AI architecture leader, not a purely strategic person with deep engineering experience (8+ years in software engineering), including several years in architecture or technical leadership roles delivering production-grade AI / LLM solutions.
• Strong backend and systems engineering expertise, with deep hands-on experience in Python and modern API/service development
• Practical experience engineering LLM-powered applications, including LLMs, RAG, and agent-based patterns
• Solid MLOps and AI platform engineering background, covering model and prompt lifecycle management, offline and online evaluation, drift detection, reproducibility, and auditability of AI systems.
• Proven DevOps and cloud architecture experience, including CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, container platforms (Kubernetes/OpenShift), observability, and secure cloud-native architectures (preferably Azure).
• Comfort working in regulated, enterprise environments, balancing speed, quality, and risk while collaborating closely with Security, Risk, Compliance, and IT stakeholders.
• A pragmatic, communicative leader and mentor, comfortable owning decisions, navigating ambiguity, influencing multiple teams, and continuously raising the technical bar; fluent in English, with German as a strong plus.

What do we offer?

• Top Zurich location with collaboration spaces and free lunch.
• All the latest technology to help you excel and advance.
• Agile environment in how we think, the way we work and our trust for each other.
• Flat hierarchy with collaboration at all levels.
• Campus feeling and a collaborative spirit.

We are looking for talented people, not just a CV that ticks all the boxes. Even if you do not have absolutely everything we have asked for, if this role sounds like a good fit for you, we encourage you to apply.

Why Vontobel?
At Vontobel, you are building better futures for our clients and society, as well as for yourself. As a family-owned and publicly listed company with over 2,000 professionals based in 28 locations globally and headquartered in Zurich, we're committed to long-term thinking and sustainability.

Our diverse team values unique perspectives, and we hire individuals determined to deliver in a dynamic and changing world. Even if you don't meet all the criteria, we encourage you to apply if you're enthusiastic about the role.

Thank you for applying to Vontobel. We will carefully review your application and will respond to you in a timely manner.

At Vontobel, we are an equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability or gender identity.

We value the many voices within our teams and are committed to creating an environment where everyone who wants to be part of our performance culture can be themselves. It is based on mutual respect and zero tolerance for any form of discrimination.

If you have any questions you can contact us through our contact form.