Senior Solution Architect

CLA is a top 10 national professional services firm where our purpose is to create opportunities every day, for our clients, our people, and our communities through industry-focused wealth advisory, digital, audit, tax, consulting, and outsourcing services. Even with more than 8,500 people, 130 U.S. locations, and a global reach, we promise to know you and help you. CLA is dedicated to building a culture that invites different beliefs and perspectives to the table, so we can truly know and help our clients, communities, and each other.

About the role

CLA is growing and seeking to hire an experienced Senior Solution Architect to join our talented Information Technology team. The position offers growth, flexibility, and a collaborative work environment. In this role, you will shape the firm’s technology landscape by partnering with key stakeholders to design solution architectures that enable insightful analytical solutions. You will create a holistic view of AI solutions architecture and ensure technology initiatives align with business objectives. This role provides strategic technical leadership, drives architecture standards, and ensures solutions are scalable, secure, and future-ready.

Most important, you should demonstrate a high level of integrity and dependability with a strong sense of urgency and results-orientation, along with excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate at all levels. Strong problem-solving and creative skills, along with the ability to exercise sound judgment, are essential.

Responsibilities

• AI Architecture, Strategy & Governance
  • Define and maintain enterprise AI architecture standards, reference architectures, governance frameworks, and best practices for Generative AI, Agentic AI, and Machine Learning solutions.
  • Partner with business and technology leaders to identify, design, and deliver AI-enabled capabilities aligned with organizational goals.
  • Establish and enforce AI governance, security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI standards.
  • Develop AI technology roadmaps and evaluate emerging AI tools, platforms, models, and industry trends.
  • Lead architecture reviews and ensure AI initiatives align with enterprise architecture, security, and governance requirements.
• AI Solution Design, Delivery & LLMOps
  • Design, implement, and oversee enterprise AI solutions leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs), RAG, AI Agents, vector databases, and modern AI frameworks.
  • Translate business requirements into scalable, secure, and cost-effective AI architectures and technical solutions.
  • Optimize AI systems for token efficiency, context management, retrieval relevance, response quality, performance, and cost.
  • Establish LLMOps practices including deployment, evaluation, monitoring, observability, testing, and lifecycle management.
  • Define and implement AI evaluation frameworks measuring accuracy, relevance, grounding, latency, and business outcomes.
  • Provide technical leadership and mentorship on AI architecture, prompt engineering, agentic systems, AI security, and operational best practices.

Requirements

• 6 years of relevant experience required.
• Bachelor's degree or a combination of relevant experience and training may be considered in lieu of a degree.

Skills

• Enterprise Architecture Design – Ability to develop and maintain architecture frameworks and standards.
• Solution Architecture – Expertise in designing scalable, secure, and integrated technology solutions.
• Data Architecture & Pipeline Development – Skilled in building data pipelines and enabling analytics solutions.
• Cloud Technologies – Proficiency in cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid architectures.
• Integration & API Management – Strong knowledge of system integration patterns and API design.
• Security & Compliance – Understanding of security principles, risk management, and regulatory compliance.
• Technical Governance & Documentation – Ability to enforce standards and produce clear architectural documentation.

Pay

The compensation range for this position in Minnesota is $108,000 – $185,000. Factors such as geography, experience, education, skills, and knowledge may impact position of pay within the range. Our approach to compensation emphasizes collaboration and career growth, viewing compensation as an investment in our people.

Benefits

To support our CLA family members, we focus on their physical, financial, social, and emotional well-being and offer comprehensive benefit options that include:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance
• 401k retirement plan
• Additional wellness benefits (details available here)