At S&W, we help our clients thrive by simplifying the complex, illuminating new paths, and shaping solutions that make a difference. As one of the UK’s top 10 fastest-growing accountancy firms, we have been a trusted partner since 1881—helping businesses and individuals meet challenges and seize opportunities across generations.
Built on expertise and driven by ambition, we provide a comprehensive range of services, including tax and accountancy, advisory and assurance, corporate finance, and restructuring. We are defined by our purpose—to help navigate challenges, unlock potential, and achieve the extraordinary.
S&W acquired ClearViewIP in September 2025 to complement the existing advisory services that S&W currently offers its clients including corporate finance, valuations, transaction services and forensic services, along with business tax, audit, consulting and business outsourcing services.
The ClearViewIP team comprises experienced IP professionals, with decades of experience in managing, protecting and commercialising innovation and ensuring best practice IP approaches are deployed to help clients win in the market.
Job DescriptionPrincipal Architect – AI-First IP Intelligence Platform
We are transforming a global IP intelligence organization from expert-driven workflows into an AI-first, scalable platform architecture. Our mission is to convert complex, knowledge-intensive IP workflows-prior art search, patent landscape analysis, FTO, competitive intelligence-into modular, explainable, enterprise-grade AI systems.
- Location: Gurugram, India
- Working format: 5 days per week in the office
The Role
You will work closely with the Director and Head of the Workbench Program in the UK, and partner with the India operations team to understand how the work is done today and translate that into the platform. This is an architecture role with long-term platform ownership and significant technical influence. It is not about maintaining existing systems. The foundations are being laid now, and you will be shaping them hands-on:
- AI-native workflows that reason over long technical documents and cite evidence
- Backend services that orchestrate large analytical workloads across a data platform, and the APIs around them.
- Modern frontend experiences built for reviewing output at scale (React/NodeJS or equivalent) - a near-term critical path for this hire
- Secure, enterprise-grade Azure-based deployments, with Databricks as the current leading platform for the data/AI layer.
- Robust DevOps and MLOps foundations, including model evaluation
You will operate at both strategic and hands-on levels-designing long-term architectural blueprints while actively shaping core systems in their earliest stages. This role is not about maintaining existing systems. It is about laying the foundations for a platform that will define the next decade of the company’s growth.
Qualifications
Technical Strengths
- 12-15+ years in software engineering, with significant architectural ownership
- Experience building large-scale, distributed, enterprise-grade systems
- Proven, hands-on track record designing and building modern backend AND frontend architectures - frontend/UI depth is essential, not a nice-to-have, for this role
- Strong experience in Azure cloud deployments; hands-on Databricks experience (PySpark, Delta Lake, MLflow) strongly preferred
Technical Depth
- Polyglot capability (Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, Node.js or similar)
- Data storage and query design: SQL, Delta / Lakehouse patterns, search indexes
- Structured extraction from long documents; structured-output contracts with LLMs
- Batch inference at scale, and the failure modes of long-context model calls
- Infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD pipeline design
- APIs and service design
- Desirable: vector databases, semantic search, RAG architectures - though our work leans more on verified structured extraction than on retrieval alone
- Vector databases, Semantic search systems, RAG architectures, Knowledge graphs
Domain Advantage (Preferred)
- Experience in IP analytics, patent intelligence, legal tech, or other knowledge-intensive domains
- Exposure to patent data formats, citation networks, IPC/CPC classifications
- Experience building explainable systems in regulated or high-trust environments
Skills Required
- 12–15+ years of software engineering experience with significant architectural ownership
- Experience building large-scale, distributed, enterprise-grade systems
- Hands-on experience designing and building modern backend and frontend architectures
- Strong experience with Azure cloud deployments
- Polyglot capability in languages such as Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, or Node.js
- Experience with SQL, Delta or Lakehouse patterns, and search indexes
- Experience with structured extraction from long documents and structured-output contracts with LLMs
- Experience with batch inference at scale and long-context model failure modes
- Experience designing infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines
- Experience with APIs and service design
- Hands-on Databricks experience, including PySpark, Delta Lake, and MLflow
- Experience with vector databases, semantic search, or RAG architectures
- Experience with knowledge graphs
- Experience in IP analytics, patent intelligence, legal technology, or other knowledge-intensive domains
- Exposure to patent data formats, citation networks, and IPC/CPC classifications
- Experience building explainable systems in regulated or high-trust environments
What We Do
As top 10 fastest growing UK accounting and advisory firm, we’ve been there, as a trusted partner, helping businesses and individuals meet challenges and seize opportunities across generations. In a world that is constantly evolving we help our clients thrive by simplifying the complex, illuminating new paths, and shaping solutions that really make a difference. Since 1881, we’ve been a trusted partner, building a legacy on expertise, simplicity, and an unrelenting commitment to client success. It is our vision to be the go-to professional services firm for growing businesses and private clients who have complex, diverse needs. Our specialists provide an extensive range of services from tax and accountancy, to assurance and financial advisory services. We are a business built on expertise, driven by ambition, and defined by our purpose - helping businesses and individuals both in the UK and internationally navigate challenges and seize opportunities.
