Lead Platform Architect - AI Platform

About the role

Fortescue is looking for an experienced Lead Platform Architect to lead the design and technical evolution of its AI Platform within the Data and AI team, reporting to Manager Engineering, Operations and Platforms. The role translates business requirements and enterprise architecture direction into secure, scalable and reusable AI platform capabilities, working closely with engineering, product and operations teams. The position is based at the Fortescue Perth office in Fortescue, with ad hoc site travel as required and a Monday to Friday roster.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the architecture and design of the AI Platform, defining reusable services, integration patterns and technical solutions aligned with enterprise architecture standards.
• Develop and maintain the platform technical roadmap, prioritising capability improvements, business requirements and technical debt.
• Design secure, scalable solutions for generative AI, large language models and intelligent agents, including retrieval, orchestration and enterprise integration.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through architecture reviews, prototypes, implementation guidance and resolution of complex technical challenges.
• Embed security, identity management, data protection, auditability and governance controls into platform designs.
• Establish operational readiness standards covering monitoring, evaluation, performance, reliability, recovery and cost management.
• Support platform adoption through reference implementations, technical guidance, onboarding and continuous improvement of the developer experience.
• Collaborate with cloud, infrastructure, data, security and integration teams to manage dependencies and deliver seamless platform changes.
• Maintain architecture documentation, technical decision records and compliance with enterprise governance and change management processes.
• Mentor architects and engineers and drive platform improvements through measurable business outcomes.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• Substantial experience in software engineering, solution architecture or platform architecture, including leading complex platforms from design through production.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering production AI solutions involving generative AI, large language models or intelligent agents.
• Proven ability to design reusable platform services, integration patterns and scalable solutions adopted across multiple teams.
• Strong stakeholder engagement, communication and technical mentoring skills, with experience collaborating across engineering, product, operations and security teams.

Required skills

• Practical experience with AWS or Azure, enterprise data integration, containers, infrastructure as code and automated delivery pipelines.
• Strong programming capability in Python, C# or comparable languages.
• Knowledge of distributed systems, APIs, identity and access management, secure integration, resilience and scalability.
• Understanding of retrieval-augmented generation, agent orchestration, context management, Model Context Protocol (MCP), AI evaluation and guardrails.
• Experience with observability, AI model and agent evaluation, performance monitoring, capacity planning and cost optimisation.
• Snowflake, mining, resources or operational technology experience is advantageous.