AI Technology Ecosystem Architect

IBM

IBM

Software Engineering, IT, Data Science

California, USA · Tokyo, Japan · Texas City, TX, USA

Posted on May 28, 2026
Introduction

At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you’ll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that’s passionate about driving innovation and making a difference.

Your role and responsibilities

IBM is seeking a deeply experienced AI Technology Ecosystem Architect to shape and drive the success of partner and open source community engagement, with focus on data, models, and agents in industry domains and supporting sovereign AI deployment.

This role has two primary areas of focus.

First, you will serve as the technical solutions architect for strategic AI technology partnerships and ecosystem initiatives across both commercial and open source AI. You will deeply understand IBM, partner and open source technologies, assess the value they can create for IBM and our partners, and help define and shape joint solutions, products, and projects, including open source initiatives. You will work closely with the technology partnerships business development team to help originate, structure, and advance these opportunities.

Second, you will help activate and drive the success of partners after signing, translating stated ambitions into execution and scaled outcomes. This includes defining, refining, bringing to market and amplifying joint value created by IBM and the partner, often through partner-led offerings that embed or extend IBM technology and supporting open source technologies that underpin them.

Approximately 70% of the role will focus on architecting and amplifying technology partnerships around IBM’s commercial AI platforms, including watsonx Data & AI and watsonx Orchestrate / Agent platforms, and 30% will focus on open source, engaging AI Alliance members and activating open source contributions aligned to IBM’s priorities.

The successful candidate will bring a strong combination of deep AI technical expertise, AI product and solution experience, ecosystem and partnership business development leadership. This individual must be comfortable engaging with partner CTOs, founders, researchers, product leaders, and engineering teams, and translating technical collaboration opportunities into ecosystem growth, joint solutions, open source contribution, and market impact.

In this role, you will:

  • Identify, evaluate, and architect solutions based on partner and open source AI technologies, including data, models, agents and helping to define joint solutions, products, technical integrations, and open source initiatives
  • Engage partner technical and business leadership to shape joint value propositions, technical collaboration models, and ecosystem outcomes
  • Support the overall IBM AI Technology Partnerships organization in sourcing, closing and activating new technology partners
  • Work across IBM product, engineering, ecosystem, developer relations, marketing, and go-to-market teams to align priorities and drive execution
  • Translate AI technology trends, technical differentiation, and partner capabilities into actionable partnership strategy and ecosystem priorities
  • Help drive activation and amplification of partnerships through joint technical engagement, solution definition, ecosystem programs, and market-facing initiatives with an eye toward first wins and scaling wins
  • Support the development of joint offerings in which IBM technology is embedded within or paired with partner-led solutions
  • Engage AI Alliance members to encourage and coordinate contributions to open source AI projects in areas such as data, models, agents, and governanc
  • Represent IBM in external ecosystem, technical, and open source forums requiring both strong technical credibility and strategic perspective
Required education
High School Diploma/GED
Preferred education
Bachelor's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • Deep hands-on technical background in artificial intelligence, solution architecting and/or forward-deployed customer or partner engineering, with the ability to engage credibly on modern AI architectures, tooling, and enterprise implementation patterns
  • Significant experience building, shaping, and supporting AI solutions, platforms, or products including in
  • Foundation models and LLMs
  • Retrieval, search, and knowledge systems
  • Model tuning, inference, and evaluation
  • Agentic AI and orchestration frameworks
  • AI infrastructure and enterprise deployment patter
  • Significant experience in partnership business development, relationship management and customer/partner success
  • Strong ability to assess partner technologies at both the architectural and solution levels and translate technical differentiation into business, product, and ecosystem value
  • Demonstrated ability to work across technical, product, and business stakeholders to advance complex external collaborations
  • Strong written, verbal, and executive-level communication skills
  • Ability to operate independently and drive outcomes in a highly matrixed environment.
Preferred technical and professional experience
  • Experience working with AI platform providers, model developers, data ecosystem partners, agent platform companies, or open source AI communities
  • Experience supporting the launch or scaling of joint AI solutions and ecosystem initiative
  • Familiarity with enterprise AI requirements related to governance, interoperability, trust, scalability, and deployment
  • Experience engaging with open source communities, industry alliances, or technical consortia
  • Strong understanding of the role of open source in accelerating AI innovation, ecosystem scale, and platform adoption
  • Experience working at the intersection of technical strategy, ecosystem development, and go-to-market activation

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM has a global presence, operating in more than 175 countries with a broad-based geographic distribution of revenue. The company’s Global Markets organization is a strategic sales business unit that manages IBM’s global footprint, working closely with dedicated country-based operating units to serve clients locally. These country teams have client relationship managers who lead integrated teams of consultants, solution specialists and delivery professionals to enable clients’ growth and innovation. By complementing local expertise with global experience and digital capabilities, IBM builds deep and broad-based client relationships. This local management focus fosters speed in supporting clients, addressing new markets and making investments in emerging opportunities. Additionally, the Global Markets organization serves clients with expertise in their industry as well as through the products and services that IBM and partners supply. IBM is also expanding its reach to new and existing clients through digital marketplaces.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.


This position is eligible for participation in an IBM Sales Incentive plan. Actual incentive opportunity will be based on performance and the eligible Target Incentive, as addressed in the applicable plan, all of which is subject to change. The compensation range listed for this position is the IBM Reference Salary that is used when you are not actively participating in a sales plan. Your actual base pay plus incentive opportunity will be determined by the Incentive Plan assigned to you.

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