AI Solutions Architect

Simpson Thacher’s AI Solutions Architect will be a core part of delivering heavily tailored or custom AI tools to the Firm’s lawyers and professional staff. This role requires a robust technical background, excellent communication skills, and the ability to bridge the gap between business need, legal requirements and technical solutions in the context of AI and natural language processing (NLP) technologies.

The AI Solutions Architect is positioned within the Firm’s Applied Analytics Group, which is a part of the Firm’s Knowledge & Innovation Department. This position will collaborate closely with lawyers, data scientists, legal support professionals, and other technical resources within the Firm. The role demands creative problem-solving, analytical rigor and the continued pursuit of a practical understanding of AI and NLP technologies.

Essential Job Duties & Responsibilities

• Work closely with lawyers, legal support professionals, technical personnel and business stakeholders to identify opportunities for AI-driven improvements, translating business needs into technical specifications and designs
• Lead the analysis, development, implementation and ongoing maintenance of specific AI projects (solution comparisons and validation, stakeholder meetings, task management, quality assurance, rollouts, etc.)
• Design, develop and configure LLM-enabled solutions (operating in both a low-code platforms and custom codebases)
• Apply scalable prompt engineering and prompt chaining techniques to business challenges—crafting, testing and refining prompts to ensure accurate, context-relevant results
• Evaluate the performance of AI systems, creating benchmarks to better understand their quality and refining them based on user feedback
• Create and maintain dynamic templates to generate customized outputs for generative AI workflows
• Present to and educate others on the mechanics, purpose and benefits of custom AI solutions
• Collaborate with data scientists to integrate advanced text processing capabilities (both pre- and post-processing) and custom models into tailored AI workflows
• Document development processes, codebases and best practices to facilitate knowledge sharing and maintain a well-organized, reproducible environment
• Stay current with the latest advancements in LLMs, NLP, Deep Learning and ML research, implementing cutting edge techniques and incorporating them into production systems as appropriate
• Handle projects on request under the direction of the CKIO, Director of Applied Analytics AI and other executive staff
  
  

Education

• A bachelor’s degree required, preferably in computer science, engineering, data science, information systems, or related field
• Juris Doctorate (J.D.) a substantial plus
  
  

Skills And Experience

• 2 years of experience in a technical role, such as data science, machine learning engineering, solutions architect or software development (a focus on AI and NLP preferred)
• Proficiency in Python required with a strong command of data structures and text processing operations is a substantial plus
• Demonstrated success building with LLMs, ideally leveraging frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy, Azure AI Foundry, CoPilot Studio, Azure ML Studio and implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques
• Experience with version control systems such as Git or equivalent
• Experience working with APIs is a plus
• Proficiency writing complex SQL queries to extract, manipulate and analyze data from relational databases
• Knowledge of templating languages (e.g., jinja2) is a plus
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Strong organizational skills and project management abilities
• Ability to quickly learn new technologies and adapt to evolving needs and capabilities
• Able to translate business problems to technical logic and practical solutions
• Able to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to a non-technical audience
• Proactively develops and maintains technical knowledge in AI systems
• Experience in the legal field is a significant plus
  
  

Salary Information

NY Only: The estimated base salary range for this position is $150,000 to $180,000 at the time of posting.

The actual salary offered will depend on a variety of factors, including without limitation, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and if applicable, the location in which the applicant lives and/or from which they will be performing the job. This role is exempt meaning it is not overtime pay eligible.

Simpson Thacher will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.

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