TwelveLabs · 9 hours ago
Chief Architect
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$300K/yr - $360K/yr
15+ years expTwelveLabs is pioneering the development of cutting-edge multimodal foundation models that comprehend videos like humans. They are seeking a Chief Architect to define architectural direction, set platform standards, and lead critical projects to enhance system scalability and reliability.
Generative AIInformation TechnologySoftwareVideo
Responsibilities
Define and maintain the north star architecture (service boundaries, data flows, contracts) that teams can execute against
Set and enforce API and platform standards: naming conventions, versioning rules, backward compatibility, deprecation and migration playbooks
Be hands-on on the highest-impact work: directly lead and implement 1–2 critical cross-cutting projects at a time (often spanning multiple pods). Prototype and productionize platform components when it’s the fastest path to clarity, momentum, and adoption
Land key pull requests (PRs), author reference implementations and build reusable libraries/golden paths that eliminate repeated work across teams
Drive platform-wide reliability, performance and cost efficiency improvements
Architect and guide “deploy anywhere” patterns for enterprise needs (SaaS, dedicated cloud, BYOC, on-prem) with strong security/tenancy and operability principles
Lead architecture reviews and act as a senior technical arbiter for cross-pod decisions; document decisions via Architecture Decision Records and Technical Design Docs
Build architecture leverage: coach and mentor senior engineers and engineering leaders; raise the bar on technical design, debugging and engineering judgment
Qualification
Required
15+ years of total industry experience in software engineering or AI/ML, designing and shipping large-scale distributed systems or AI/ML systems in production
5+ years operating at Senior Staff or Principal level (or equivalent scope), leading cross-team technical initiatives that materially changed an organization's trajectory
Strong experience in more than one AI/ML domain: computer vision, foundation models (LLMs / VLMs / multi-modal models), search & retrieval systems, AI agents, etc
Strong distributed systems + API design: versioning, backward compatibility, SDK ergonomics, operational concerns experience
Proven ability to reduce complexity: converge fragmented surfaces, drive deprecations/migrations and simplify architecture
Deep production instincts: incident response, observability, reliability engineering, and cost/performance trade-offs
Comfortable being hands-on in a modern stack (languages can vary; you can ramp quickly and lead by example)
Exceptional written and verbal communication: can drive alignment with clarity and precision
Benefits
Full health, dental, and vision benefits.
Flexible PTO and parental leave policy.
Office closed the week of Christmas and New Years.
VISA support (such as H1B and OPT transfer for US employees)
Company
TwelveLabs
The world's most powerful video intelligence platform for enterprises.
11-50 employees
H1B Sponsorship
TwelveLabs has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (3)
2024 (1)
2023 (4)
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageTotal Funding
$107.12MKey Investors
Firstman StudiosNaver VenturesRadical Ventures
2025-10-10Corporate Round
2025-06-09Series Unknown
2024-12-12Series A· $30M
Leadership Team
Jae Lee
Founder & CEO
Recent News
Index Ventures
2026-01-06
2025-12-05
intelcapital.com
2025-12-05
Company data provided by crunchbase