Director, Platform Architect (Investment & Research Technology)

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(s).

Schwab Asset Management is seeking a senior Investment & Research Platform Architect to lead the architecture strategy, modernization, and technology evolution of a front-office & Asset management research ecosystem supporting more than 50 applications across ETFs, Mutual Funds, and Separately Managed Accounts (SMA).

This role partners with Portfolio Managers, Traders, Quantitative Researchers, Risk teams, Product leaders, solutions architects, and engineering teams to design scalable, resilient, and future-ready technology platforms that power investment decision-making, research, trading, analytics, and data-driven insights across the asset management lifecycle.

The ideal candidate combines deep Asset Management domain expertise with strong architecture leadership, hands-on engineering experience, and a passion for modern cloud, data, and AI-enabled platforms.

Key Responsibilities:

Architecture Strategy & Leadership

• Define and evolve the target-state architecture for Investment and Research technology platforms.
• Develop architecture roadmaps aligned to business priorities, operating models, regulatory requirements, and enterprise standards.
• Lead architecture governance, design reviews, technology assessments, and modernization initiatives.
• Drive simplification of legacy platforms and adoption of scalable, cloud-native architectures.
• Establish architecture principles, integration patterns, reference architectures, and reusable platform capabilities.

Investment & Research Domain Architecture

• Experience supporting front-office investment and research functions.
• Portfolio management, construction, optimization workflows
• Trade lifecycle management and execution processes
• OMS/EMS platforms and market connectivity
• Investment research and quantitative analytics platforms
• Risk, performance, and attribution analytics
• Market, reference, and investment data ecosystems
• Research content, data distribution, and decision-support capabilities

Hands-On Technical Leadership

• Partner with engineering teams on solution design, implementation, and modernization efforts.
• Provide guidance on APIs, microservices, event-driven architecture, integration patterns, and distributed systems.
• Participate in design validation, proof-of-concepts, code reviews, and architecture troubleshooting.
• Resolve complex scalability, performance, resiliency, and integration challenges.

Cloud, Data & AI Architecture

• Lead the design and deployment of applications on GCP and PCF platforms.
• Define cloud-native patterns leveraging containers, automation, observability, and resilient infrastructure.
• Partner with data engineering teams to establish scalable data architectures, pipelines, metadata, and analytics-ready platforms.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI and GenAI capabilities to enhance investment workflows, research productivity, knowledge discovery, and operational efficiency.
• Ensure AI solutions comply with enterprise governance, security, and risk management standards.

Engineering Excellence & Modernization

• Champion modern engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, security-by-design, observability, and platform reliability.
• Drive adoption of modular, API-first, event-enabled architectures.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, platform engineering, cybersecurity, and SRE teams to improve operational resilience and scalability.

Collaboration & Influence

• Partner with business, product, engineering, architecture, and data leaders to align technology strategy with business objectives.
• Communicate architecture decisions effectively to executive and technical audiences.
• Mentor engineers and architects and help elevate technical capabilities across the organization.
• Influence strategic technology direction through thought leadership and practical delivery experience.

What you have

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, solution architecture, or enterprise architecture roles.
• Significant experience within Asset Management, Investment Management, Research, Trading, or Quantitative Technology environments.
• Proven track record leading large-scale platform architecture and modernization initiatives.
• Strong understanding of software delivery within Agile and product-centric organizations.
• Ability to balance strategic architecture thinking with hands-on implementation leadership.
• Strong proficiency in Java (Spring Boot/Spring Cloud), .NET/C#, or Python.
• Deep expertise in microservices, event-driven architectures, API design, and distributed systems.
• Strong cloud architecture experience on GCP (preferred) or AWS.
• Experience with cloud-native technologies including Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong understanding of data architecture, data engineering patterns, and analytics platforms.
• Experience with Snowflake, SQL Server, and modern cloud data platforms.
• Familiarity with DevOps toolchains including Git, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Jenkins, or equivalent platforms.
• Knowledge of AI/ML architecture patterns, model deployment, and governance frameworks.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with industry platforms such as Aladdin, Charles River, Bloomberg, FactSet, Refinitiv, Perform, or VestmarkOne.
• Knowledge of FIX protocol, market data platforms, trading workflows, and investment operations.
• Familiarity with quantitative research, risk, and performance analytics ecosystems.
• TOGAF, Google Cloud Architect, or similar architecture certifications.

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