3Cloud · 21 hours ago
Director - AI
United States
Full-time
Remote
Director/Executive
$168K/yr - $253K/yr
12+ years exp3Cloud is a company that values experimentation and teamwork, seeking a Director - AI to lead multiple teams and manage architecture for large Azure programs. The role involves connecting business goals to cloud modernization roadmaps, defining architecture frameworks, and guiding multi-team execution while promoting strong engineering and AI-assisted practices.
Technical Support
No H1B
Responsibilities
Maintain a clear view of each team member's delivery commitments, growth plans, and internal contributions
Develop and grow team members through regular coaching, clear expectations, and constructive feedback. Build a culture of trust, inclusion, and collaboration
Monitor team health, morale, and workload balance, acting early to address engagement or performance concerns in partnership with practice leadership
Maintain regular one-to-one connections with each team member, provide clear feedback, and help them remove blockers related to client work, pursuits, or internal initiatives
Oversee staffing and resource alignment across teams, balancing utilization, development goals, client needs, and sustainable workloads
Communicate practice priorities and organizational objectives clearly, ensuring teams understand how their work contributes to broader organizational goals
Define interview standards and mentorship strategies, training others to apply them consistently and improving hiring outcomes and talent growth at scale
Create and maintain development plans for team members, including stretch assignments, shadowing, certifications, and opportunities for external visibility
Lead or support performance reviews, promotion recommendations, and compensation input for your teams, using consistent standards that reflect both impact and behavior
Represent your teams in leadership forums, communicate expectations and decisions clearly back to the group, and bring forward patterns, risks, and successes that should shape practice strategy
Lead architecture and technical strategy for large Azure programs and portfolios so solutions meet client goals for value, security, scalability, reliability, performance, and cost
Define modernization blueprints and reference architectures across applications, platforms, and data, including system and subsystem designs, patterns, and standards that simplify delivery and operations over time
Translate business and product strategy into cloud architecture roadmaps and execution plans that drive measurable outcomes and adapt based on production feedback and telemetry
Guide major architecture decisions across programs, promote shared design standards and reusable models, and resolve high-impact technical trade-offs
Work across teams to connect solutions into cohesive end-to-end architectures with clear ownership boundaries and integration contracts
Provide architectural oversight during delivery through design reviews, forums, and governance, keeping cross-cutting concerns (security, performance, resilience, availability, compliance, observability, and cost) aligned across teams
Promote modular design, clear boundaries, testability, CI/CD, and observability so non-functional requirements are treated as first-class and systems remain reliable and maintainable
Use AI tools to accelerate discovery, design, code, tests, documentation, and analysis, and scale successful practices so teams adopt them consistently
Lead or co-lead executive and senior stakeholder conversations on cloud modernization, platform strategy, AI adoption, and program roadmaps
Use structured problem solving to clarify scope, dependencies, risks, and trade-offs, and shape delivery plans that balance value, cost, speed, and long-term system health
Set discovery strategy so program objectives flow into a clear, traceable backlog tied to architecture and business outcomes
Explain complex architecture and modernization strategies in clear language for executives, business leaders, and technical teams, including options, trade-offs, and recommendations
Build trusted relationships with technology and business leaders, influencing priorities and investment decisions in ways that help mature their engineering and architecture practices
Run structured decision-making forums (such as architecture reviews or steering committees) that produce clear decisions, documented rationale, and actionable next steps
Define architecture, discovery, and delivery frameworks and working agreements that support predictable, incremental delivery across multiple teams and time zones, including cadences, artifacts, escalation paths, and hybrid delivery guidelines
Align teams on shared outcomes, APIs, integration contracts, and operating models, ensuring cross-team dependencies are identified early, owned, and tracked through to completion
Support effective use of Agile methods at program scale so architecture, backlogs, and release plans support meaningful increments, stable team velocity, low defect escape, clear definitions of done, and course corrections based on telemetry and feedback
Track risks, technical debt, quality trends, and architectural drift across teams, and recommend adjustments that keep programs on track while balancing short-term delivery needs with long-term system health
Support cross-practice opportunity qualification and estimating using playbooks, benchmarks, and templates so the organization focuses on high-fit pursuits and improves proposal quality and confidence in value, risk, and margin
Mentor Senior Architects, Delivery Architects, and senior engineers, helping them grow systems thinking, architectural judgment, cross-team awareness, and their ability to lead multi-team initiatives
Provide architectural oversight across programs, modeling pragmatic decision-making, including when to keep solutions simple, when to standardize, when to extend patterns, and when to introduce new technologies
Help shape career paths and development plans for architects by clarifying expectations for operating at program scale and providing concrete examples of what 'good' looks like
Create and maintain high-leverage learning assets—such as reference implementations, architecture decision records, playbooks, and mentoring guides—that accelerate onboarding and skill growth
Support hiring, calibration, and talent development by defining interview standards, participating in senior-level interviews and promotion reviews, and training others to apply those standards consistently
Set a high bar for executive-ready communication and storytelling, and coach others so their narratives support clear decisions and strengthen client trust
Help build a culture of psychological safety, inclusion, constructive feedback, and continuous improvement within and across teams, and support new ways of working that endure beyond a single project
Grow the company by identifying opportunities within your accounts across all our capabilities and pursuing them with the support of the account team
Intentionally build executive relationships within accounts to expand our partnership and create opportunities to provide strategic value
Drive sales opportunities by participating in pursuit teams as either the Pursuit Lead or Technical Solution Lead
Partner with sales, account, and practice leaders to shape technical strategy for strategic pursuits, projects and/or programs
Lead the creation of solution options, program-level architectures, and estimates, clearly documenting assumptions, dependencies, and risks and explaining how proposed approaches drive business value and reduce risk
Operate as a senior technical advisor whose guidance shapes multi-track initiatives and supports long-term account growth
Identify follow-on and adjacent opportunities—such as platform extensions, additional modernization waves, AI-enabled capabilities, or data estate modernization—that align with client strategies and 3Cloud’s strengths
Define and evolve reusable assets—such as reference architectures, modernization playbooks, landing zone templates, workshops, accelerators, and starter repositories—that become standard patterns for delivery teams and reduce cycle time and rework while honoring architectural and nonfunctional requirements
Champion adoption of modern frameworks, cloud platform capabilities, automation practices, and AI-assisted tools in a responsible and secure way, using pilots and experiments with clear success criteria to turn innovation into stable, repeatable practice
Contribute to internal cross-practice initiatives that share patterns and lessons from large programs and reinforce our credibility with clients and partners
Shape enablement programs that grow capabilities and reusable assets across accounts and package applied innovation into offerings and assets used in delivery and pursuits
Qualification
Required
12+ years of experience delivering solutions in a primary domain such as application development, cloud platform engineering, DevOps, or data and analytics, including significant work at enterprise scale
7+ years of experience in solution architecture and leading development or engineering teams, including multi-team or multi-workstream efforts at program scale
Proven ability to oversee delivery of complex, enterprise-scale AI/ML programs
Deep expertise across most of the following: Agents & Orchestration – leveraging Semantic Kernel, LangChain, or similar frameworks to design intelligent workflows; applying tool/function calling, planner and agent-based patterns, and workflow automation engines
Search & Retrieval – implementing solutions with vector databases such as Azure AI Search, Pinecone, FAISS, or Milvus; applying hybrid search methods, re-ranking strategies, and selecting embedding models for accuracy and performance
Evaluation, Quality & LLM Operations – establishing offline and online evaluation approaches; using golden datasets, hallucination and groundedness validation, toxicity and safety testing; building telemetry and feedback loops; managing monitoring, deployment pipelines, and ongoing optimization of large language models
Responsible AI, Security & Privacy – incorporating practices such as threat modeling, privacy reviews, data minimization, safety guardrails, policy enforcement, auditability, and model risk management in line with GDPR and organizational standards
AI Platforms & Data Foundations – applying hands-on experience with Azure AI services, Databricks, Azure OpenAI, and related modern data platforms
Cloud Engineering – designing with APIs, containers, microservices, and DevOps pipelines to deliver scalable, cloud-native solutions
Data Integration & Governance – developing and managing data pipelines; applying quality controls, metadata practices, and master data management approaches
Analytics & Visualization – delivering insights with Power BI and other visualization tools
Proven ability to integrate emerging AI frameworks into enterprise-ready solutions
Expertise with modern development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor)
Established partnerships or influence in the broader AI ecosystem
Knowledge of analytics and data science tools, frameworks, and advanced techniques
Relevant Azure or Databricks certifications in AI, Data, or Architecture
Proven experience leading architecture and delivery for Azure-based modernization, transformation, AI, or platform programs at enterprise scale
Experience defining solution and platform architectures that connect business strategy with scalable technical design, strong delivery practices, and measurable outcomes
Experience leading hybrid and remote teams and working with multiple stakeholders across time zones while maintaining alignment, quality, and predictable delivery
Deep understanding of core concepts, languages, frameworks, and design patterns in a primary domain, with the ability to apply them at system and program scale
Experience designing and integrating quality, automation, and observability practices at scale, including automated testing strategies and embedding quality checks into delivery workflows
Experience using AI-augmented development and integrating AI and machine learning capabilities into solutions (for example, using APIs, frameworks, or cloud-based AI services and tools for code, test, and documentation acceleration)
Significant experience working in Agile or Scrum environments at scale, including backlog structuring, dependency management, integration planning, and release management
Proven success in consulting or professional services, including client-facing leadership and executive engagement
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with strong presentation, written, and verbal communication skills for both technical and business audiences
Commitment to continuous learning in cloud, data, and AI, with the ability to turn that learning into practical improvements for teams and clients
Ability to foster culture, inclusion, and community participation across the organization in ways that support rapid cross-team collaboration
Preferred
Relevant cloud architecture certifications (for example, Azure-focused architect certifications or comparable role-based certifications) are strongly preferred
Familiarity with key Azure services used in modern solutions that are relevant to your domain (for example, messaging, compute, data, security, networking, management, and integration services)
Benefits
Flexible work location with a virtual first approach to work!
401(K) with match up to 50% of your 6% contributions of eligible pay
Generous PTO providing a minimum of 15 days in addition to 9 paid company holidays and 2 floating personal days
Two medical plan options to allow you the choice to elect what works best for you!
Option for vision and dental coverage
100% employer paid coverage for life and disability insurance
Paid leave for birth parents and non-birth parents
Option for Healthcare FSA, HSA, and Dependent Care FSA
$67.00 monthly tech and home office allowance
Utilization and/or discretionary bonus eligibility based on role
Employee Assistance Program to help with everyday challenges
Company
3Cloud
3Cloud is a born-in-the-cloud Microsoft Gold-certified Azure technology services firm that provides cloud strategy.
501-1000 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
unknown2025-11-13Acquired
Leadership Team
J
Jim Dietrich
Founder & President
Karen Crone
Chief People Officer
Recent News
2026-01-08
2026-01-06
2026-01-06
Company data provided by crunchbase