Director, Architect Principal

Your opportunity

This role is designed for in-office collaboration and is based on site in Westlake, TX or Austin, TX.

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.

As part of Schwab’s Enterprise Architecture community, you will join an elite group representing the pinnacle of technical expertise and architectural leadership. Distinguished Engineers at Schwab set enterprise direction, define paved roads, and elevate engineering outcomes across platforms and domains.

This role focuses on enterprise-scale modernization, governance, and platform evolution—spanning mainframe, distributed systems, and public cloud architectures. You will influence how teams modernize legacy platforms, adopt cloud-native patterns, and scale applications in a secure, resilient, and governed manner.

In this role, you will

• Provide enterprise architecture leadership across heterogeneous platforms including mainframe, distributed, and cloud-native systems.
• Define and evangelize application modernization patterns and practices (e.g., strangler, decomposition, re-platforming).
• Establish and govern public cloud application patterns and reference architectures.
• Lead architecture governance, including standards, design reviews, and exception management.
• Define and promote scalable application patterns supporting diverse deployment models and technologies.
• Influence developer productivity through modern tooling, CI/CD pipelines, and GitHub-based workflows.
• Shape enterprise API architectures and integration strategies.
• Optimize security requirements into architecture governance processes
• Partner with business, product, and engineering leaders to define current, transitional, and target-state architectures.

Core Skill Set and Expertise

• Enterprise Architecture leadership across application, platform, and integration domains.
• Application modernization patterns and migration strategies.
• Public cloud application architectures and hybrid integration models.
• Architecture governance frameworks and operating models.
• Developer tooling, CI/CD, and automation using GitHub and modern pipelines.
• API and event-driven architectures
• AI Solution Architectures
• Familiarity with mainframe application architecture, SDLC, optimization, and modernization.
• Scaling patterns for high-volume, mission-critical applications across heterogeneous environments.
• Familiarity with Business Architecture concepts and practices

What you have

Required:

• 15+ years of experience in enterprise application and platform architecture.
• Proven leadership in large-scale modernization initiatives.
• Demonstrated depth in modern distributed/cloud architectures.
• Strong experience defining and enforcing architecture standards and governance.
• Ability to influence senior leaders and translate complex systems into clear architectural direction.
• Deep understanding of modern delivery practices including Agile, DevSecOps, and CI/CD.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.