(Senior) Principal Infrastructure Architect IPAI ^(m/f/d)

Location
Im Zukunftspark 11/13
74076 Heilbronn
Employment Area
IT - BI, AI & Data
Level
Experienced professional
Working Model
Full-time
Reference ID
2234

Would you like to play an active and hands-on role in shaping the development of IPAI?

As an innovation platform for applied AI, we pursue the goal of successfully bringing artificial intelligence into use in companies and institutions. With IPAI, we have set ourselves the ambition of becoming the "Global Home of Human AI". We are creating a space for successful AI transformation and collaboration, generating further momentum for a true AI hotspot in Europe.

You are responsible for IPAI’s infrastructure substrate: the compute, storage, networking, identity, security, and operational foundations that everything else depends on. You translate strategic goals, regulatory requirements, and ecosystem needs into concrete, implementable infrastructure architectures, and ensure they are built and operated to a high standard.

Your tasks

Own IPAI’s infrastructure architecture end to end, defining target architectures for compute (including GPUs), storage, networking, identity, security, and isolation models.
Translate strategic, legal, and governance requirements into concrete systems, balancing performance, cost, sovereignty, compliance, and usability.
Specify and drive implementation of infrastructure solutions, ensuring architectures are implementable, operable, and resilient in practice.
Act as the primary technical interface to internal IT, external providers, and partners, aligning IPAI’s needs with enterprise and public-sector realities.
Define operational and security standards, including access models, monitoring, reliability expectations, and auditability.
Continuously evolve the infrastructure foundation, anticipating future needs of IPAI services and members while maintaining stability and trust.

Your profile

Extensive experience as an Infrastructure Architect, Platform Architect, or senior infrastructure engineer in complex, regulated, or multi-stakeholder environments.
Proven track record of designing and delivering large-scale infrastructure systems that are used by multiple teams or external users.
Experience working with public-sector, enterprise IT, or regulated industries is highly desirable.
Deep understanding of modern infrastructure stacks, including cloud and/or on-prem environments, networking, storage, identity and access management, and security architectures.
Hands-on experience with infrastructure implementation and automation (e.g. Kubernetes, Terraform or similar tooling).
Strong grasp of reliability, scalability, observability, and cost-management principles.
Ability to design clear platform interfaces and constraints that enable higher-level services to operate effectively.
Strong systems thinker with excellent judgment in making and explaining trade-offs.
Credible communicator across engineering, legal, governance, and executive audiences.