Chief Architect Broker Dealer

Your Opportunity

Schwab remains committed to providing increased visibility to career growth opportunities and job requirements. This posting announcement is part of increased transparency and while all qualified applicants will be reviewed and considered, this organization has a preferred candidate identified for this role. 

At Schwab, you’re empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us “challenge the status quo” and transform the finance industry together. 

Our organization, Cross Enterprise Services (CES), builds and maintains common technology solutions and utilities in a simple and consistent way that are applicable to all lines of business at the firm. These platforms are mission critical, and integral to providing world-class service to our external and internal clients. 

The BDM Chief Architect will provide overarching architectural leadership for the BDM program. This role will own the integrated target-state and transition-state architecture; connect the work of the BDM Distinguished Engineer, Enterprise Architecture, and solution architects across STS and engineering teams, and vendors; and drive critical architectural decisions to closure. The Chief Architect will ensure that the finalized architecture is clearly communicated, broadly supported, and consistently implemented across all BDM workstreams. 

 The role will complement the BDM Distinguished Engineer. The Distinguished Engineer will provide deep technical expertise for Broker Dealer functions, shape critical designs, and help solve the program’s most complex engineering problems. The BDM Chief Architect will integrate those designs into broader architecture, build alignment across business and technical stakeholders, lead architecture governance, coordinate internal and vendor teams, resolve cross-domain issues, and translate the approved direction into executable roadmaps and engineering guardrails. 

The BDM Chief Architect will be accountable for ensuring that architecture decisions support the program’s business outcomes, regulatory obligations, operational resilience, and long-term technology strategy. The role will also provide architectural leadership for build-versus-buy decisions, vendor integration, mainframe migration, coexistence, data reconciliation, and the eventual retirement of legacy platforms. 

 Success will be measured by a clear and approved BDM architecture; timely resolution of architectural decisions and dependencies; strong alignment across Schwab and its vendors; consistent implementation of the approved Architecture; controlled management of risks and exceptions; and measurable progress in reducing mainframe dependency without compromising stability, controls, or client outcomes 

What you have

Required:

Architecture Leadership

• Proven ability to lead complex, large enterprise, architectural initiatives across multiple teams, domains, or business areas. 

• Ability to perform solution architecture for highly complex programs involving multiple systems, emerging technologies, or substantial investment. 

• Proven track record of designing and delivering enterprise-scale systems that handle high volume, high availability, and mission-critical workloads across multiple lines of business. 

• Demonstrated accountability for ensuring modernization strategies and blueprints are executed as designed. 

• Experience providing feedback and ongoing guidance to fine-tune systems and implementations based on real-world scenarios 

Strategic Thinking & Technology Direction

• Experience analyzing current vs. target state capability gaps and formulating domain level technology strategies. 

• Ability to establish and maintain technology blueprints, roadmaps, and a three-year technology strategy. 

• Demonstrated ability to build and lead a community of practice across architects and technical leaders, fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and collective ownership of architectural standards. 

• Experience creating forums and mechanisms that promote teamwork, continuous improvement, and innovation across distributed or matrixed technical teams. 

Portfolio & Governance

• Experience providing technical leadership across portfolios, strategic programs, and functional domains. 

• Strong understanding of technology governance, risk tolerances, exception processes, and compliance requirements. 

• Skilled at mediating and escalating design disagreements to drive aligned outcomes. 

Business & Technology Acumen

• Expertise in cloud modernization, Java, .Net, Kafka and NoSQL technical environments.   

• Ability to build and maintain strong business relationships and act as the first point of architectural guidance for the domain. 

• Strong executive presence, including the ability and experience to build and deliver presentations, materials, and communication to executive level leadership. 

• Leadership courage to respectfully challenge decisions when necessary and fully commit once decisions are made.