Director, Data Architecture (Managing 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 Distinguished Engineer community, you will be part of an elite group representing the pinnacle of technical talent and industry best practices. This community of technology leaders is instrumental in driving the firm's technology strategy, fostering innovation, and ensuring excellence in our data architecture practices. Schwab is accelerating enterprise data modernization to support faster product delivery, stronger governance, and responsible AI adoption. We’re evolving cloud-scale platforms and event-driven data capabilities while raising the bar on quality, lineage, and controls demanded by a regulated business. This is the moment to define the north star and the paved road that teams will follow for years.

At Schwab, you’ll tackle problems at real scale—building and governing data capabilities that power digital investing for millions of clients. If you’ve led principal-level architecture in big tech or in highly regulated environments, you’ll find both the complexity and the opportunity to make a firmwide mark here.

You’ll operate at the intersection of cloud modernization, enterprise governance, and regulatory rigor—this is a high-trust role with executive visibility and broad influence across platforms, product teams, and shared services.

Reporting to the Office of the CTO, you’ll set the enterprise data strategy, standards, and governance that guide how Schwab designs, builds, and operates data products and platforms. Your work will enable thousands of technologists to better serve millions of clients—supporting the stewardship of trillions of dollars in client assets—while meeting high bars for security, resiliency, and compliance.

In this role, you will:

• Define, design, and communicate modern enterprise data architecture patterns, practices, and roadmaps (contextual, conceptual, and logical).
• Partner with business and technology leaders to define transitional states and target-state data architecture, delivered iteratively.
• Maintain deep awareness of Schwab business domains, regulatory considerations, and financial services standards.
• Lead enterprise data architecture initiatives across technology and business teams—aligning outcomes, sequencing work, and removing friction.
• Set enterprise technical strategy, standards, and guidelines for the data architecture domain.
• Represent data architecture on architecture review boards and as a key voice for critical, firmwide initiatives.
• Enable data deployment across public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.
• Coach and mentor architects, engineers, and operations teams as they adopt modern data practices and patterns.

What you have

Required:

• 15+ years in data management, including significant experience in enterprise architecture roles.
• Over 10 years of experience in large enterprise data environments
• Demonstrated people leadership experience.
• Strong proficiency with SQL/NoSQL databases, data modeling tools, ETL/ELT, and cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Proven success leading transformative initiatives using modern cloud-based data processing, analytics, and AI/ML.
• Experience architecting high-volume, near real-time data ecosystems using relational and NoSQL technologies.
• Expertise designing event-driven architectures and scaling event processing/analytics.
• Strong command of MDM strategy and data governance (metadata, lineage, quality) to protect integrity and support regulatory compliance.
• A passion for continuous learning, modernization, and meeting demanding non-functional requirements (e.g., scalability, resiliency, integration).
• Deep understanding of modern delivery practices (Domain-Driven Design, DevSecOps, Continuous Delivery) and Agile/Lean ways of working.
• Ability to influence executive leaders and translate complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.

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