Principal AI Architect
San Francisco, CA hybrid Until 8/21/2026 First posted April 22, 2026 Last posted April 22, 2026
Job description
Draup is a Series A-funded agentic AI company building the intelligence layer for how global enterprises make workforce and go-to-market decisions. We work with 250+ enterprise clients — including 5 of the Fortune 10 — processing 1B+ job descriptions, 850M+ professional profiles, and signals from 100+ labor databases.
We are now building our Silicon Valley engineering team — a small, senior group focused on next-generation AI research and product.
Location: San Francisco, SoMa — minimum 4 days per week in-office.
What you'll do
• Define and own the architectural vision for next-generation AI systems: novel agent architectures, reasoning systems, and proprietary model development.
• Prototype and evaluate breakthrough AI capabilities — predictive modeling, autonomous signal synthesis, multi-modal intelligence — that create defensible IP.
• Set the technical foundations: data architecture, model serving, agent orchestration, and inference infrastructure for a multi-year product horizon.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging AI paradigms (multi-agent reasoning, RLHF, retrieval-augmented fine-tuning) before they are mainstream.
• Establish engineering standards, architecture review processes, and IP documentation practices for the team.
What we require
• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, or related field. PhD or equivalent research depth preferred.
• 5+ years in AI/ML engineering with at least 2 years in a principal engineer or lead architect role.
• Demonstrated history of building original AI systems that became products — not implementations of existing patterns.
• Deep expertise across: LLM training and fine-tuning, agentic system design, knowledge graph construction, large-scale data modeling.
• Comfort operating in greenfield conditions: high ambiguity, high ownership.
• Patents, published research, or shipped products with clear proprietary differentiation are strong signals.
• No visa sponsorship. Must be authorized to work in the US without current or future employer sponsorship.
About this role
Summary
Lead AI architecture, prototype innovative systems, establish data and inference infrastructure.
Job title
Principal AI Architect
Experience level
5+ years
Industry
software
Location requirements
San Francisco, CA; in-office minimum 4 days/week
Salary
Not specified
Management role
No
Skills & keywords
Required skills
AI/MLLLMagentic system designknowledge graphdata modeling
Preferred skills
patentsresearch publicationsproprietary differentiation
Specializations
AIMLLLMagentic systemsknowledge graph
Locations
Structured locations inferred from the posting.
San Francisco, CA, USA
Hybrid City