Sr. Manager / Lead Architect, Agentic and Generative AI — Equinor, Stavanger (Norway) Full Time

If you have spent years building AI systems that actually work in production and you are now looking for a role where you can set the direction for how an entire company adopts agentic AI, this one is worth a close look. Equinor, one of Europe’s largest energy companies, is hiring a Sr. Manager / Lead Architect for Agentic and Generative AI at their headquarters in Stavanger, Norway. It is a senior position with real scope — you would be defining the architecture for how agent-based and LLM-powered systems are built, governed, and scaled across the organisation.

This is not a junior exploration role. Equinor wants someone who has already been through the hard parts of delivering AI solutions end to end and who can now lead that effort at enterprise scale. Let me walk you through what the job involves, what Equinor is looking for, and what you should know before you apply.

Quick Job Overview

About the Employer

Equinor ASA is a Norwegian multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger, Norway. With around 25,000 employees working across more than 20 countries, Equinor is one of the largest energy companies in Europe. It was formerly known as Statoil and StatoilHydro before rebranding to Equinor in 2018. The company operates across oil and gas, renewables, and low-carbon solutions, and has publicly committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Equinor houses one of Norway’s largest and most diverse digital teams. Their technology division works on everything from operational technology and cybersecurity to data platforms and AI — which is exactly where this role sits. The company’s digital and AI strategy is not a side project. It is woven into how they run drilling operations, manage supply chains, and make engineering decisions, and that makes the architectural choices in this role genuinely consequential.

What This Role Involves

This is a senior architecture and leadership position. You would not be building prototypes — you would be setting the foundation for how Equinor designs, deploys, and governs agentic AI systems across the entire company.

Your core tasks include defining and evolving the enterprise reference architecture for agentic and generative AI. That means establishing the standards, decision principles, and guardrails that shape how these capabilities scale. You would partner with AI and ML engineering teams to deliver production-grade agentic systems covering orchestration, grounded retrieval, structured LLM integrations with enterprise APIs, MCP-based tool and data access, and multimodal document understanding.

You would also lead solution strategy and technology choices, create architectural blueprints, align senior stakeholders and engineering teams, and provide technical leadership from early concept through scaled deployment. A significant part of the role involves embedding safety, compliance, and privacy by design — aligning with GDPR and the EU AI Act, enforcing policy as code, and managing uncertainty in non-deterministic systems by surfacing confidence, bounding autonomy, routing to human oversight, and providing safe fallback and rollback paths.

Beyond the technical work, you would be raising engineering quality across the organisation — driving performance, reliability, and cost efficiency — while mentoring others and building reusable foundations for future AI solutions.

Required Skills and Qualifications

Equinor has been specific about what they need. Here is what is required:

Required:

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, Linguistics, or a related field
• Deep architectural experience across data, model, and application layers — with strong judgment on trade-offs, scalability, risk, and compliance in enterprise AI systems
• Proven leadership in navigating ambiguity, shaping technical direction, aligning senior stakeholders, and translating AI strategy into business-aligned execution
• Hands-on experience with modern LLMs and agent frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen, LangChain, CrewAI, or similar), including prompt design, RAG architectures, model evaluation, and practical experience with major LLM providers and open-source models
• Solid Python and software engineering fundamentals (testing, CI/CD, version control)
• A strong track record of delivering end-to-end AI solutions from concept to measurable business value

Preferred:

• Recognised thought leadership through mentoring, publishing, speaking, patents, or stewardship of open-source initiatives
• Multimodal AI experience: document and image understanding, diagram Q&A, speech-to-text
• Responsible AI: PII handling, red-teaming, content moderation, risk assessment, regulatory compliance
• Containers and cloud: Docker, Kubernetes, Azure (Azure ML, AKS, Azure OpenAI, storage, networking)
• Enterprise integration: APIs, events/messaging, standardised data and tool access via MCP

Salary, Benefits, and Relocation Support

Equinor has not listed a specific salary for this position. The salary field is therefore: not specified by the employer.

What Equinor has stated publicly is that they offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes a competitive salary, global parental leave, a bonus scheme, and a pension plan. They also emphasise flexible work arrangements and a strong internal job market that allows career development across disciplines and geographies.

Whether relocation support is provided has not been explicitly confirmed in the job posting. If you are applying from outside Norway, it would be worth asking about this directly during the recruitment process.

Work Permit / Visa Note

Visa sponsorship or work authorisation is not specified by the employer in this job posting.

However, as general context: Norway offers a skilled worker residence permit for qualified professionals who have a confirmed job offer from a Norwegian employer. The application is processed through the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI). To be eligible, you typically need relevant higher education (a minimum of a bachelor’s degree or equivalent vocational training) and the job must be full-time. The application fee is approximately NOK 6,300. This is general information about Norway’s immigration rules and is not a guarantee that Equinor will sponsor a work permit for this role. You should confirm directly with Equinor’s recruitment team whether they support work authorisation for international candidates.

Who This Role May Suit

This role is aimed at experienced AI architects and technical leaders who have already moved beyond building individual models or running experiments. You are likely a good fit if you have spent several years designing AI systems that operate at enterprise scale, if you have strong opinions about how agentic systems should be governed and deployed safely, and if you are comfortable making architectural decisions that affect hundreds of engineers and thousands of end users.

It suits someone who thinks systematically — not just about the technology, but about compliance, safety, and organisational impact. If you have experience with the EU AI Act or GDPR in the context of AI, that will be particularly relevant here. The role also calls for someone who can communicate technical direction to senior stakeholders who may not be AI specialists themselves.

If you are currently a senior AI engineer, a principal architect, or a technical lead who has been moving toward a more strategic, company-wide remit, this could be the right next step.

How to Apply Officially

Applications must be submitted through Equinor’s official careers portal on Workday. You can apply directly here:

Apply on Equinor’s Official Careers Page

The application deadline is 5 June 2026 (end of the day, Norwegian time). Equinor encourages candidates to apply as soon as possible.

Do not apply through any third-party website, recruiter, or messaging platform. Equinor has stated that all applications must be entered through their online application portal only.

Required Documents

Equinor has not published a specific list of required documents. However, based on their standard recruitment process and the seniority of this role, you should typically have ready:

• An up-to-date CV or resume detailing your AI architecture and leadership experience
• Academic transcripts or degree certificates (relevant for the skilled worker permit if applicable)
• Contact details for professional references

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Equinor sponsor work visas for this role?
This is not explicitly stated in the job posting. Equinor is a major international employer with a history of hiring from outside Norway, but you should confirm directly with their recruitment team whether visa support is available for this specific position.

Is the role remote or on-site?
The work model is not explicitly stated. The locations listed are Stavanger, Oslo, Rotvoll, and Sandsli — all in Norway. This suggests the role is based at one of these offices. Equinor does offer flexible work arrangements, but you should clarify the exact expectations during the interview process.

What is the salary range?
Not specified by the employer. Equinor states that positions are evaluated using their global job architecture based on responsibilities, complexity, and impact. Salary would likely be discussed during the recruitment process.

What programming languages and tools are most important?
Python is specifically mentioned as a requirement. Experience with agent frameworks (LangGraph, AutoGen, LangChain, CrewAI), Azure cloud services, Docker, and Kubernetes is preferred.

Is Norwegian language required?
The job posting is entirely in English and does not mention a Norwegian language requirement. Equinor is an international company where English is the working language for many technical roles.

Relevant Internal Links

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• AI Implementation Specialist — Siemens Energy, Erlangen
• Staff Software Engineer, Inference — Anthropic, London
• Senior Software Developer — Philips, Eindhoven

Disclaimer

JobsRivo is an independent job listing portal and is not the employer. Applicants should apply only through the official employer website. JobsRivo does not charge fees, process visas, or guarantee job offers.