Director, Software Development & Engineering Senior (PL)

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, a preferred candidate has been identified for this role.   

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(s).

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.

Schwab is looking for an experienced Director, People Leader to lead our Broker Dealer Services Engineering (BDSE) SAvE domain within Cross Enterprise Services (CES). BDSE owns the technology platforms that power Schwab's broker-dealer business and is responsible for modernizing legacy brokerage systems, client and account platforms, enterprise data foundations, and engineering delivery through AI-first software development. This leader is an experienced technology manager who is used to running teams of engineers, architects, and managers across a broad scope of responsibility. As a senior and trusted leader for business and technology partners, you will help drive good decisions and project delivery. You will own every aspect of the team, including recruiting, performance management, and career growth, and you will support the needs of our development, technology, and business partners. Our ideal candidate is a confident self-starter who isn't afraid to get their hands dirty, has a strong cloud-focused development background, and communicates well. They are passionate and curious about cloud services, technology, and the web, and they have a strong understanding of AI, including generative AI and agentic AI. They can find practical ways to use AI to improve engineering productivity, automate operations, and make platforms more reliable, and they can champion AI adoption that is responsible and well governed. Lastly, this leader will manage resources across multiple locations and provide engineering leadership for products including public cloud solutions such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), PaaS hosting platforms, caching technologies, NoSQL and shared database platforms, and AI-enabled tools and services.

What you'll do:

• Lead the engineering vision, standards, and best practices for our public cloud PaaS, IaaS, caching, NoSQL, and shared data platforms, including GCP.
• Lead engineers, architects, and managers across multiple locations to deliver highly scalable, reliable platforms and applications on budget and on schedule, in line with our long-term technology direction.
• Drive high availability, resiliency, disaster recovery, and observability across our systems, including multi-region architecture, failover readiness, capacity planning, and chaos and resiliency testing, so we meet our service level objectives (SLOs).
• Act as a senior, trusted partner to business and technology leaders, helping them make sound decisions and deliver projects successfully.
• Work with enterprise architecture, reliability, support, and onboarding teams to build durable systems and keep mean time to resolution (MTTR) low.
• Champion AI adoption that is practical, responsible, and well governed, using generative and agentic AI to boost engineering productivity, automate operations, and make platforms more reliable.
• Own every aspect of team leadership, including recruiting, performance management, career growth, and retention.
• Manage day-to-day activities and encourage the team to follow agile software development practices, including:
• Spotting technical and resource gaps and risks early, and setting up plans to address them.
• Raising the team's visibility by tracking and celebrating wins and building relationships with key leaders in other groups.
• Continually improving processes, hiring and retention, time-to-market, and quality.

What you have

• 10+ years of software development management and leadership experience, including at least 3 years focused on cloud technologies and leading engineers, architects, and managers.
• 5+ years of experience running medium to large, complex projects with many dependencies. You can set and communicate strategy and vision, and you can influence leaders across the enterprise.
• Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS, Azure, or another major cloud provider. GCP experience is strongly preferred.
• Deep knowledge of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), as well as caching technologies, NoSQL, and shared database platforms.
• Proven experience building scalable enterprise platforms and applications that are highly available, resilient, and reliable, including multi-region architecture, disaster recovery, observability, and SLO-driven operations.
• Strong understanding of AI, including generative AI and agentic AI, and a track record of applying it to improve engineering productivity, automate operations, and make platforms more reliable, with responsible governance in place.
• Proven ability to inspire and influence teams and partners to deliver technology solutions that exceed business expectations.
• Ability to execute at scale in a fast-changing environment, build strong relationships, and encourage collaboration. You can identify, recruit, hire, coach, mentor, and keep talent to build high-performing technical teams, and you have experience setting direction, tracking progress, and holding people accountable.
• Strong technical depth and attention to detail, with the ability to design and execute against strategic goals.
• Ability to analyze problems in your area and propose and implement timely, cost-effective, high-quality solutions.
• Strong influencing, negotiation, and problem-solving skills. You can identify stakeholders, understand their needs, and manage their expectations through clear communication.
• Ability to lead and work independently in a fast-paced environment across multiple time zones and locations, with excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or a related field.
• Financial industry experience is a plus.