Lead Functional Architect, AI Travel Assistant Speedboat

Job Title

The AI Assistant Speedboat is at the forefront of shaping how AI Assistants interact with the travel ecosystem. Working at startup speed within the AI Delivery Hub, the team explores, validates, and industrializes new experiences across a rapidly evolving ecosystem of AI platforms (OpenAI, Antropic, Gemini, etc), partners, and travel providers.

The Functional Architect plays a critical role in bridging Product Managers and Engineering teams. The role transforms business opportunities, customer needs, and product concepts into clear functional architectures and delivery-ready solution designs. Working hand-in-hand with the Enterprise Architect, the Functional Architect ensures that solutions are both practical for immediate delivery and aligned with long-term platform strategy, architecture standards, and reusability objectives.

Mission

Bridge business vision and technical execution by translating product strategy into scalable, coherent, and implementable functional designs.

Drive alignment between Product Managers, Engineers, Architects, and stakeholders to ensure capabilities are delivered quickly while maintaining consistency across the AI Assistant ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

Product-to-Engineering Translation

• Partner with Product Managers to understand business objectives, customer needs, and strategic opportunities.
• Transform product ideas and use cases into functional solution designs.
• Define end-to-end user journeys, business processes, capability interactions, and functional requirements.
• Clarify scope, assumptions, dependencies, constraints, and acceptance criteria before implementation begins.
• Ensure engineering teams receive clear, actionable, and prioritized requirements.

Functional Architecture & Solution Design

• Design functional flows covering user interactions, AI assistant orchestration, travel capabilities, and operational processes.
• Define capability boundaries and interactions between systems.
• Model business processes, workflows, data exchanges, and decision points.
• Identify opportunities for reuse and standardization across use cases and partner integrations.
• Produce lightweight but effective architecture artifacts supporting fast decision-making.

Enterprise Architecture Alignment

• Work closely with the Enterprise Architect to ensure consistency with Amadeus architecture principles and Open Platform direction.
• Contribute to the evolution of reusable travel capabilities and AI patterns.
• Validate that proposed solutions fit within broader strategic architecture roadmaps.
• Support governance reviews and architecture discussions when required.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Facilitate discussions between Product, Engineering, UX, Security, and external stakeholders.
• Resolve ambiguities and align teams around a common understanding of solutions.
• Drive decision-making through structured functional analysis and trade-off assessments.
• Create visibility on risks, dependencies, and architectural implications.

Delivery Support

• Support engineering teams throughout delivery.
• Answer functional questions and clarify requirements during implementation.
• Participate in backlog refinement, design reviews, and release planning.
• Validate delivered functionality against the intended design and business outcomes.

Expected Outcomes

• Clear alignment between Product vision and Engineering execution.
• Faster transition from idea to implementation.
• Reduced ambiguity and rework during delivery.
• Consistent and reusable solution patterns across the Speedboat.
• Strong architectural coherence while maintaining delivery velocity.
• Improved collaboration between Product, Architecture, and Engineering organizations.

Required Skills & Experience

Functional & Business Design

• Ability to model complex business processes and customer journeys.
• Experience gathering, structuring, and documenting functional requirements.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to balance business value and technical feasibility.

Technology Understanding

• Good understanding of modern software architectures and APIs.
• Familiarity with cloud-native platforms, integrations, and distributed systems.
• Understanding of AI-powered products, conversational experiences, agent-based systems, or digital platforms is highly desirable.
• Ability to engage credibly with software engineers and architects.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Experience operating across Product, Engineering, and Business organizations.
• Ability to influence without direct authority.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous and fast-moving environments.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in travel technology, digital platforms, marketplaces, or AI-enabled products.
• Experience producing functional architecture, solution design, or business architecture deliverables.
• Knowledge of AI assistants, agent ecosystems, or conversational user experiences.

Success Measures

• Reduced functional ambiguity for engineering teams.
• Faster delivery of product initiatives.
• Increased reuse of capabilities across use cases.
• Positive feedback from Product Managers, Engineers, and Architects.
• Architecture decisions that balance speed, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
• Successful industrialization of Speedboat innovations into reusable platform capabilities.
  
  

Diversity & Inclusion

Amadeus aspires to be a leader in Diversity and Inclusion in the tech industry, enabling every employee to reach their full potential by fostering a culture of belonging and fair treatment, attracting the best talent from all backgrounds, and as a role model for an inclusive employee experience.  

Amadeus is an equal opportunity employer and committed to an accessible recruitment process. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, beliefs, disability or any other characteristics protected by law.

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