Senior Manager - Microsoft AI Technical Architect - TC - FS

EY · London

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Senior Manager - Microsoft AI Technical Architect - TC - FS

The opportunity

This is a senior technical architecture role for a hands-on leader who designs and delivers secure, scalable Microsoft AI and agentic solutions for financial services clients. The role owns solution architecture from discovery and option assessment through detailed design, build, integration, testing, deployment and operational handover.

The Senior Manager will work with CIO, CTO, CDO, CAIO, enterprise architecture, engineering, data, security, risk and business teams. They will translate business and control requirements into practical architectures, make clear platform and integration decisions, and lead multidisciplinary teams to turn those designs into production capability.

The role requires depth across Microsoft AI services, AI integration, identity management, and low-code platforms. It also requires the judgement to select the right boundary between Copilot Studio, Cowork, Autopilots, Power Platform, Azure AI Foundry and custom Azure / AI services.

Strong relationships with Microsoft teams are important. The Senior Manager will support technical validation, reference architecture alignment, co-sell and co-build activity with Microsoft, solution showcases and follow-on pipeline growth.

Your key responsibilities

Solution architecture and technical design

• Lead architecture discovery across business journeys, applications, data, integration, identity, security, controls and non-functional requirements.

• Create current-state and target-state architectures, architecture decision records, integration patterns, data flows, trust boundaries, deployment views and technical roadmaps.

• Decompose business use cases into agents, tools, workflows, data products, APIs, human approval points and operational controls.

• Make and defend platform choices across Cowork, Autopilots, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Fabric and supporting Azure / AI services.

• Design agent orchestration, grounding, tool invocation, memory and context handling, fallback behaviour, observability and failure recovery.

• Define non-functional requirements covering scalability, latency, resilience, availability, supportability, cost, performance and recoverability.

Integration, data and enterprise architecture

• Design secure integration with systems of record using certified connectors, Microsoft Graph, Dataverse, REST and SOAP APIs, Azure API Management, event or messaging patterns, data pipelines and Model Context Protocol (MCP) where it adds clear value.

• Work with Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, ServiceNow and other enterprise platforms, while accommodating legacy services, shared service accounts, rate limits and systems without usable real-time APIs.

• Design governed grounding and retrieval using Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, curated data products.

• Define write-back patterns, transaction boundaries, idempotency, reconciliation and approval controls for actions that update systems of record.

Security, governance and responsible AI

• Embed secure-by-design and responsible-AI controls in the architecture, including identity propagation, least privilege, environment separation, secrets management, private networking and tenant boundaries.

• Working with our Cyber team, apply Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Purview, sensitivity labelling, data loss prevention, auditability and retention requirements to AI solution design.

• Design human-in-the-loop checkpoints before client-facing activity, credit or risk decisions, and writes to systems of record; include rejection, resumption and evidence paths.

• Define consolidated logging and traceability for prompts, retrieved context, tool calls, model outputs, approvals, actions and exceptions.

• Work with security, privacy, model risk, compliance and second-line teams to evidence design decisions and prepare solutions for architecture and control approval.

Build, engineering and production readiness

• Lead technical workstreams from architecture into prototypes, proofs of concept, MVPs, pilots and scaled production services.

• Guide and, where needed, contribute hands-on to the configuration or build of Copilot Studio agents, Power Platform solutions. Support with Azure AI Foundry agents and additional Azure components.

• Define engineering standards, development environments, source control, CI/CD, solution packaging, testing, release management and operational support models.

• Establish evaluation strategies for non-deterministic systems using golden datasets, prompt and tool-selection regression, adversarial and prompt-injection testing, shadow running and sampled human review.

• Lead performance, resilience, security and operational-readiness testing, including monitoring, alerting, cost management and service support.

• Manage technical risks, dependencies, design changes, architecture debt and delivery quality.

Technical leadership and Microsoft ecosystem

• Act as the senior technical design authority for client engagements and present recommendations to architecture boards, design authorities and steering groups.

• Lead and coach solution architects, AI engineers, data engineers, integration specialists, platform engineers and low-code developers.

• Build strong day-to-day relationships with Microsoft Account, specialist seller, technical and engineering teams.

• Bring Microsoft specialists in early to validate platform fit, reference architectures, co-build opportunities and technical risks.

• Contribute to joint account planning, technical propositions, client briefings, demonstrations, proposals and solution showcases.

• Design and build repeatable solutions that can be taken to market with Microsoft based on market demand.

Skills and attributes for success

• Strong solution or technical architecture experience, ideally in consulting and regulated financial services.

• Hands-on experience delivering AI, agentic, integration, data or cloud solutions from design through to production.

• Ability to whiteboard and explain an end-to-end architecture, including orchestration, data movement, identity, controls, approval points and failure paths.

• Ability to distinguish between Copilot Studio, Power Platform and pro-code solutions based on requirements rather than preference.

• Experience designing against imperfect enterprise estates, including legacy APIs, batch feeds, separate tenants, inconsistent entitlements and systems with no consumable API.

• Experience applying architecture governance, design assurance, security review and responsible-AI controls.

• Strong client-facing communication skills and the ability to make clear recommendations under uncertainty.

• Experience leading multidisciplinary technical teams and working in agile, product-based or hybrid delivery environments.

To qualify for the role

• Significant experience as a Solution Architect, Technical Architect, Enterprise Architect or senior engineering leader delivering complex Microsoft-based solutions.

• Demonstrable architecture and delivery experience across multiple technologies listed in the Technology experience required section.

• Experience integrating AI solutions with enterprise systems of record and governed data platforms.

• Practical knowledge of identity, data access, security, privacy, audit, responsible AI and model-risk expectations.

• Experience defining and assuring non-functional requirements, engineering standards, testing and production-readiness decisions.

• Experience engaging senior technology stakeholders and presenting to architecture boards or design authorities.

• Experience working with Microsoft teams or partner ecosystem motions, including technical validation, co-sell, co-build or joint propositions.

• Microsoft certifications across Microsoft stack

The following will be an advantage

• Experience designing and implementing MCP servers or comparable tool abstraction patterns for enterprise agents.

• Experience in banking, insurance, wealth management, asset management, capital markets, payments, risk, compliance, finance or operations technology.

What we offer

· Continuous learning: You’ll develop the mindset and skills to navigate whatever comes next.

· Success as defined by you: We’ll provide the tools and flexibility, so you can make a meaningful impact, your way.

· Transformative leadership: We’ll give you the insights, coaching and confidence to be the leader the world needs.

· Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs.

If you can demonstrate that you meet the criteria above, please contact us as soon as possible.

The exceptional EY experience. It’s yours to build.

Please note;

Prior to finalizing your application, you will be asked to provide personal information across several dimensions of diversity and inclusiveness. The information you provide is kept entirely confidential and will not be used to evaluate your candidacy. We collect this data to help us analyse our recruitment process holistically and implement actions that promote diversity and inclusiveness. While optional, we encourage you to provide this information to hold us accountable towards our goal of building a better working world. Read more about our commitment to diversity& inclusiveness here . We ask because it matters!

EY exists to build a better working world, helping to create long-term value for clients, people and society and build trust in the capital markets.

Enabled by data and technology, diverse EY teams in over 150 countries provide trust through assurance and help clients grow, transform and operate.

Working across assurance, consulting, law, strategy, tax and transactions, EY teams ask better questions to find new answers for the complex issues facing our world today.

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