Fractional AI Architecture

Architecture Leadership for Production AI Systems.

Principal-level judgment for engineering teams shipping LLM and agentic systems.

I founded ActiveWizards and wrote Production-Ready AI Agents. I turn production patterns into decisions your team can operate.

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Igor Bobriakov

Defensible Architecture Decisions

RAG, orchestration, evals, data contracts, and vendors become written decisions with owners.

Pattern Transfer Through Reviews

Production patterns move through architecture reviews, PR feedback, and decision records.

Operability Before Launch

Schemas, traces, evals, fallback paths, and cost models arrive before traffic.

Decision Records, Not Vibes

Trade-offs are written down. So are constraints, owners, and reversal costs.

When This Is the Right Fit

Add architecture judgment before the system becomes expensive to change.

Who Owns the Review?

I'm Igor Bobriakov, founder of ActiveWizards, a 10-year AI engineering studio. My advisory work comes from systems my team builds and maintains.

I wrote Production-Ready AI Agents. Its Three Pillars — Observability, Reliability, Security — are the constraints I use when reviewing AI architectures.

As Architect

I review schemas, state, evals, and code paths for silent failures: errors that pass tests but corrupt behavior, cost, or trust.

As Founder

I connect architecture choices to staffing, roadmap pressure, vendor risk, and leadership funding decisions.


Choose the Right Architecture Seat

Advisory, embedded leadership, or a fixed-scope production audit. No long-term lock-in.

Prices are public so the first call can focus on fit, scope, and risk. These are specialist architecture engagements, not coaching packages or staff augmentation.

Advisor
Technical Advisory

Your team is building. Principal review is missing.

$6,000 / month
Result: Decisions reviewed, documented, and tied to production constraints.
  • Weekly architecture session
  • Async code & architecture reviews (GitHub/Loom)
  • Priority Slack for critical blockers
  • Hiring support: job specs, candidate evaluation
Includes weekly session + async reviews
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Fixed Price
Production AI System Audit

The system is stalled, fragile, expensive, or hard to explain.

$20,000 one-time
Result: A two-week Red/Yellow/Green roadmap leadership can fund.
  • Architecture, state management, evals, and observability
  • Red/Yellow/Green report with remediation roadmap
  • Delivered in 2 weeks
Fixed scope. Fixed price. PO-ready. Many advisory engagements begin here.
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When Advisory Needs Builders

The Squad

2-5 AI engineers in Python, LangGraph, vector databases, and cloud infrastructure, deployed through ActiveWizards.

The Model

I own the architecture. The team builds against it. One review loop, one set of production constraints.

Discuss a Team Engagement

Frequently Asked Questions

When AI work is moving from prototype to production, when architecture choices feel hard to reverse, or when leadership needs a written technical rationale before funding more work.

Architecture, state management, retrieval design, evals, schemas, API and MCP contracts, provider choices, observability, latency, cost, and the trade-offs your team has to operate.

I work inside the engineering loop: design reviews, PR feedback, vendor decisions, hiring screens, and decision records. I do not replace your engineering manager or product owner.

Igor reviews the submission for fit. If there is a match, the next step is a diagnostic call to map the system, name the riskiest decisions, and choose an audit, advisory, or build-team path.

Put Principal AI Architecture Judgment in the Loop.

Use the diagnostic call to map the system, name the riskiest decisions, and decide whether an engagement makes sense.

No sales team. Igor reviews each submission for fit. Mutual NDA available before working sessions.