AI Architect-W-2 ONLY
United Global Technologies · Columbia, SC
$166,400–$187,200
Jul 26, 2026
Columbia, SC
Jul 27, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role sits within a state government AI Center of Excellence, where the primary work involves evaluating AI tools and use cases, designing secure and reusable AI architectures, and supporting responsible AI adoption across state agencies. Day-to-day responsibilities include prototyping solutions, contributing to governance and compliance review processes, and building dashboards to track AI performance and adoption. It suits a technically hands-on AI specialist with experience in generative AI platforms, RAG implementations, and cloud integrations on Azure and AWS.
Senior level · 2+ years · Remote · Bachelor's required · Contract
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 1,600 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 330–2,400
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $122,874 (middle half $87,544–$162,374).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
This is a W-2 contract engagement; no corp-to-corp, no subcontracting, and no visa sponsorship.
The candidate must already be a South Carolina resident — no relocation is permitted. The role is fully remote but requires occasional onsite visits, presumably at state agency offices in SC.
The title is 'Architect (Artificial Intelligence)' but the day-to-day work is AI solution evaluation, prototyping, RAG/agent design, and use-case development — closer to a Data Scientist / AI Engineer than a traditional architect or software developer. 15-2051 was chosen as primary; 15-1252 is a reasonable runner-up given the hands-on implementation and coding emphasis.
The JD states 'Undergraduate degree … required; advanced degree preferred.' A Bachelor's is therefore a hard gate; the Master's/advanced degree is only preferred.
The overall years minimum is set to 2, reflecting the longest single-skill requirement stated (2 years for generative AI platforms and RAG/agent design). No overall role-level experience floor is explicitly stated.
KPI definition and dashboard-building are listed as required skills but name no specific tool (e.g. Power BI, Tableau). They are captured as named capabilities per the JD's explicit requirements; hiring managers should probe for the specific tooling during screening.
Preferred skills — neural networks/ANNs, transformers, NLP, image classification, time-series data, programming languages, and data tools — appear under the 'Preferred Skills' heading and are marked accordingly. No specific programming languages or data tools are named, so only the concrete named technologies (neural networks, NLP, transformers) are captured.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): AI-assisted coding tools.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
Read the full posting
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