Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We’re all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.
We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.
Position Overview
We’re looking for a Tech Lead / AI Architect to serve as the primary technical authority on an AI-native vehicle assistant engagement for a leading technology client. This isa hands-on architecture role. You will architect, implement, and ship — making system-level decisions and contributing code, often on the same day.The engagement centers on an in-vehicle AI assistant for a commercial fleet operations context, built for real-world use in constrained, connectivity-variable environments.
You will lead a focused Engineering POD building a dual-mode agentic AI assistant that operates fully offline on constrained edge hardware and cloud-connected via AWS Bedrock — integrating voice and chat interfaces, edge-optimized inference, a local SQLite data layer, cloud data mirroring, and a proactive alert and recommendation engine. You will own implementation directly across cloud infrastructure, data synchronization, STT/TTS integration, and agentic orchestration, while serving as the primary technical authority from architecture through delivery.
Why This Role Matters
At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world — engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows.
This engagement sits at the frontier of applied AI: conversational, agentic intelligence that operates in constrained edge environments and scales to the cloud. The architecture decisions made here will define how our client expands their AI platform from proof-of-concept to production. You are not filling a seat. You are setting the direction.
What You’ll Do
Architecture & Technical Leadership
- Define and own end-to-end technical architecture for a dual-mode agentic AI system across offline (edge) and cloud-connected (AWS Bedrock) environments
- Drive architectural decision-making across agentic orchestration, data synchronization, voice and chat interfaces, and cloud infrastructure; author and maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
- Act as the primary technical authority within the Engineering POD and the key technical interface with client stakeholders
- Bring an AI-forward development practice to every phase of the engagement — using tools like Claude, Cursor, and agentic coding assistants as force multipliers across implementation, code review, and technical documentation
- Guide and align the engineering team across AI/ML, full stack, and integration workstreams
Hands-On Implementation
- Take direct implementation ownership across cloud infrastructure provisioning, local SQLite data layer, cloud data mirror, STT/TTS pipeline integration, and REST API surface
- Build and configure the AWS environment end-to-end — including Bedrock, Guardrails, storage, and connectivity services
- Implement the edge-to-cloud data synchronization strategy between offline local storage and AWS-hosted data stores
- Contribute to agentic orchestration implementation, integration testing, and iterative deployment; support incoming team members with onboarding and context transfer
Agentic AI & Conversational Systems
- Design the agentic orchestration layer with tool-use, contextual memory, and conversational interaction patterns for both offline and connected modes
- Select an edge LLM based on prior experience with comparable hardware profiles; configure AWS Bedrock with Guardrails for connected-mode reasoning and content safety
- Collaborate with the AI/ML Engineer on prompt engineering, model evaluation, and proactive recommendation logic
- Ensure architectural consistency and integration quality across voice (STT/TTS) and chat modalities on a shared backend
Delivery & Quality
- Provide technical quality assurance and architectural governance across all POD workstreams
- Lead cross-functional engineering coordination across AI/ML, full stack, product, and UX tracks
- Drive iterative delivery cadence — shipping testable software at each phase review checkpoint and supporting investor-facing demonstrations and POC readouts
- Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace
What You’ll Bring
Required Experience
- 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 2+ years in architectural leadership roles
- Proven, hands-on experience with agentic AI systems — including orchestration frameworks, tool-use patterns, and conversational memory architectures
- Direct experience with AWS and AWS Bedrock, including environment provisioning, Guardrails configuration, and integration of cloud-native services and conversational AI systems (STT/TTS)
- Experience designing and implementing offline-capable or edge AI systems — including local model inference, constrained runtime environments, and embedded data layers such as SQLite
- Proficiency in at least one modern backend language commonly used in AI and cloud-native stacks (e.g., Python, TypeScript/Node.js)
- Experience building and shipping proof-of-concept or innovation-driven technical programs under real time constraints
- Demonstrable usage of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor
Technical Skills
- Agentic AI: Orchestration frameworks, tool-use patterns, contextual memory, prompt engineering, LLM evaluation and selection
- Edge AI: Offline/edge LLM deployment, resource-constrained inference, hardware profile alignment
- Cloud: AWS (Bedrock, Guardrails, infrastructure provisioning), distributed systems architecture, REST APIs
- Data: Local embedded data layers, synthetic telemetry platforms, edge-to-cloud data synchronization
- Voice & UI: Speech-to-Text (STT), Text-to-Speech (TTS), tablet-optimized web applications, lightweight dashboard UI
- Delivery: Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), agile delivery practices, iterative POC methodology
Collaboration & Communication
- Strong hands-on architectural leadership across AI, cloud, and distributed systems; able to balance long-term architecture with short-term delivery goals and make confident decisions in evolving environments
- Clear communicator and effective collaborator across engineering, product, UX, and client teams; skilled at explaining complex AI and cloud concepts accessibly and facilitating technical reviews
- Bias toward action with strong ownership and ability to manage competing priorities; collaborative leadership style that empowers T-shaped engineering teams
- Passion for emerging AI technologies and comfort working with new architectures, unproven solution spaces, and rapid experimentation
You’ll Do Well Here if You Are
- A builder who leads. You architect it and then help build it. You are not waiting for someone else to prove your design works.
- Comfortable with ambiguity. The requirements will evolve. The models will surprise you. You thrive in that tension.
- A fast learner who knows you don’t know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You’re senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.
- Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You’d rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.
- Obsessed with craft. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don’t put your name on work you wouldn’t stand behind.
- All in. You treat clients’ businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.
- Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.
Why Join Robots & Pencils?
At Robots & Pencils, you’ll join a global team of engineers, designers, and strategists who care deeply about craftsmanship and innovation. You’ll work on meaningful systems that require both technical excellence and thoughtful collaboration.
If you enjoy building across the stack, solving real integration challenges, and contributing to a high-performing team, we’d love to meet you.
