Chief Security Architect

Your Opportunity

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.

We believe in the importance of in-office collaboration and fully intend for the selected candidate for this role to work on site in the specified location.

The Office of the CTO organization is seeking a Chief Security Architect to lead security architecture strategy, governance, and direction across business and technology domains. This role collaborates closely with Enterprise Architecture and federated architecture teams to define and implement enterprise-wide architecture principles, blueprints, and modernization strategies. The role requires breadth across lifecycle management, strategy, architecture stewardship, risk governance, and strong business and technology acumen.

Role Expectations

Leadership
•    Advise Technology leadership and CISO-aligned executives on technology and security architecture strategy.
•    Mentor technical talent and elevate security architecture capabilities across SCS and partner teams.
•    Connect teams across Schwab to reduce duplication and align architectural direction.
•    Influence decisions beyond SCS and represent cybersecurity strategy internally and externally.
•    Demonstrate leadership courage by challenging architectural decisions and unifying direction.
Architecture
•    Lead major security architecture initiatives, including modernization efforts, blueprints, and platform-level redesigns.
•    Create and maintain domain blueprints and modernization plans, ensuring they are implemented as designed.
•    Design enterprise patterns at the contextual, conceptual, and logical layers across security domains.
•    Govern architecture for projects and programs, ensuring compliance with standards and approved principles.
Risk Management
•    Own execution of technology governance within cybersecurity domains, ensuring standards are met and exceptions are managed within risk tolerance.
•    Mediate disagreements across architecture teams and escalate when necessary.
•    Identify emerging governance gaps and drive portfolio-level corrections.
•    Respond to client-impacting events with architecture recommendations that improve resilience. 
Strategy
•    Analyze current-state versus target-state architecture gaps and define a multi-year security architecture strategy.
•    Ensure near-term initiatives align with long-term architectural vision and business outcomes. 
•    Provide guidance on translating technical innovation into business and client value.
•    Serve as the primary strategist and escalation point for cybersecurity architecture direction. 
Business & Technology Acumen
•    Advise the business on industry security trends and competitive differentiators. 
•    Understand and communicate total cost of ownership (TCO) and economic trade-offs of architecture choices.
•    Communicate clearly and confidently across all organizational levels, including executive leadership. 
•    Maintain strong relationships with business stakeholders as the primary point of architectural guidance. 

What you have

To ensure that we have fulfilled our promise of "challenging the status quo," this role has specific qualifications that successful candidates should have.

Required Qualifications

•    10+ years of experience in security architecture within regulated industries (e.g., finance, insurance, healthcare), with roles of increasing scope and complexity.
•    5+ years leading enterprise security architecture efforts in complex organizations.
•    Software development experience delivering secure products.
•    Experience with frameworks including TOGAF, COBIT, NIST, ISO, and BSIMM.
•    Collaboration experience across DevOps, integration, infrastructure, and capability modeling.
•    Strong communication skills, influence, and executive presence.

Preferred Qualifications

•     Preferred experience in financial services and securities markets.

In addition to the salary range, this role is also eligible for bonus or incentive opportunities