Chick-fil-A is investing heavily in Automation and Intelligence and is strategically counting on those areas to increase employee effectiveness across the business from restaurants to support center to Chick-fil-A Supply. The Intelligent Automation Engineering team, within Digital Transformation & Technology (DTT), exists to deliver digital capabilities and outcomes that enable core capabilities in the areas of intelligence and automation.
The Principal Solutions Architect role is responsible for the technical delivery of the Generative AI capability for Chick-fil-A as well as the Tango Generative AI software product. It is responsible for the stewardship, technical design, integration and delivery of related custom and packaged software, frameworks, and solutions. This role will set solution direction and be responsible for engineering outcomes by influencing the software engineers executing in this area. This will include both Chick-fil-A staff engineers and outsourced engineers, and ensure all development complies with Chick-fil-A Engineering practices. The incumbent will participate in technology selections, be responsible for solution architecture and vendor management, ensure that all delivered work complies with Chick-fil-A security and design standards, and confirm it fits into the Chick-fil-A Technology Strategy.
This role is responsible for partnering with senior members of Advanced Analytics & Automation, Intelligent Automation Engineering Leadership, Enterprise Architecture, and DTT Audience Teams, and will participate in strategic planning and continuous improvement efforts.
Our Flexible Future model offers a healthy mix of working in person and virtually, strengthening key elements of the Chick-fil-A culture by fostering collaboration and community.
• Build or influence generative AI/LLM frameworks that reduce complexity and manual efforts across all user audiences throughout the business.
• Architect solutions and lead engineering for LLM based chatbot solution.
• Solutions Architect for Generative AI technology toolset, including setting technical direction, software design, integration design, engineering priority, delivery velocity and operational support.
• Ensure code quality and best practices.
• Collaborate with functional product managers and other stakeholders in setting product direction and stewarding technical outcomes.
• Compile and manage budget related to all Generative AI infrastructure and engineering related activities.
• Empower and support other engineering and audience teams in DTT as they leverage generative AI capabilities in their technology solutions.
• Solicit and incorporate feedback into new releases.
• Partner with Generative AI functional leadership to define, prioritize and deliver features and integrations with Chick-fil-A’s generative AI toolset.
• Create and build buy-in for annual vision and goals. Communicate expectations and feedback for team members who contribute to the shared vision.
• Continuously improve products and services measured by the adoption of these frameworks across all technical teams.
• Influence and set direction for engineering staff to deliver results within Chick-fil-A's core values and guiding principles.
• Develop leadership and vendor management skills amongst staff.
• Manage vendor relationships and budgets, ensuring compliance to Chick-fil-A vendor management standards and accounting practices.
• Select and evaluate external partners to continuously optimize and raise the bar.
• Prepare vendor SOWs and negotiate delivery and cost terms to ensure efficient and competitive agreements.
• Verify that solutions developed internally and externally meet security, operational, and compatibility standards.
• Review and steward cloud computing resources to optimize and maintain budgeted use.
• Measure and optimize performance of delivered products and services. Develop relevant measures and SLAs.
• Continuously learn emerging new technologies and best practices, looking for opportunities to apply and advance analytics at Chick-fil-A.
• Drive consensus across multiple constituent teams by listening and empathizing. Communicate plans and hold teams accountable to delivery timelines.
• Maintain compliance with Chick-fil-A architecture standards, security standards, and data strategy.
• 8+ Years of experience in custom software engineering
• 3+ Years of experience specifically in Natural Language Processing or conversational AI
• Proficiency in Python, Java and/or Golang
• Machine Learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch
• Architecting cloud native software in public cloud environment
• Applying machine learning and advanced analytics concepts to solve business problems
• Deploying solutions with Docker or Kubernetes container technologies
• Automating CI/CD pipelines
• Supporting production systems 24x7
• Translating complex problems and solutions effectively between business and engineering audiences
• Leading and innovating around artificial intelligence
• Leading development teams using Agile methodology
• Developing early in career developers and pod leaders
• Experience with GCP or AWS and their associated AI/ML products
• Knowledge of DevOps practices
• Understanding of UX principles for conversational interfaces
• Understanding of current trends in AI and chatbot technologies
• Passionate about applying technology strategy to support business processes at scale
• Motivated by continual learning
• Ability to lead others by influence
• Ability to lead small teams
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Good interpersonal and team collaboration skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to lead as a player coach
• 3+ Years of experience leading software engineering teams
• 1+ Year of experience with LLM
• Experience with Typescript and Vercel
• Familiarity with dialog management systems
• Supporting solutions using a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) budget
• Architecting both end user facing software products and software frameworks/APIs intended to support a software engineering user audience
• Working with off-shore (or near-shore) development teams on less complex projects
• Engineering data security with encryption, access management, and auditing
• Processing non-structured data (Geospatial, voice, vision, documents)
• AWS Cloud Architect Certification