Director, Technical Cross Enterprise Services, Chief Architect

Your opportunity

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.

Our organization, Cross Enterprise Services (CES), builds and maintains common technology solutions and utilities in a simple and consistent way that are applicable to all lines of business at the firm. These platforms are mission critical, and integral to providing world-class service to our external and internal clients.

As the Chief Architect for CES, you will provide senior level architecture and technology leadership across a complex portfolio of applications, platforms, and modernization initiatives. In this role, you will shape, communicate, and drive the long-term architectural vision for the CES domains that provide cross-enterprise platforms (serves all lines of businesses and channels) while ensuring alignment to Schwab’s broader technology strategy.

You will lead enterprise level architectural initiatives, guide modernization efforts, and ensure that all technology decisions support business outcomes, risk expectations, and operational excellence. As a trusted advisor, you will work closely with senior business and technology leaders, offering strategic insight on technological trends, competitive differentiators, and opportunities to innovate.

This role represents both a deep technical expert and a broad strategic leader—someone who is the “first among equals” in environments with other Distinguished Engineers and technical leaders. You will influence decision making beyond organizational boundaries, mentor developing engineers, and create a culture of pragmatic, scalable, and well governed architecture across the CES organization.

What you have

Required:

Architecture Leadership

• Proven ability to lead complex, large enterprise, architectural initiatives across multiple teams, domains, or business areas.
• Ability to perform solution architecture for highly complex programs involving multiple systems, emerging technologies, or substantial investment.
• Proven track record of designing and delivering enterprise-scale systems that handle high volume, high availability, and mission-critical workloads across multiple lines of business.
• Demonstrated accountability for ensuring modernization strategies and blueprints are executed as designed.
• Experience providing feedback and ongoing guidance to fine-tune systems and implementations based on real-world scenarios

Strategic Thinking & Technology Direction

• Experience analyzing current vs. target state capability gaps and formulating domain level technology strategies.
• Ability to establish and maintain technology blueprints, roadmaps, and a three-year technology strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to build and lead a community of practice across architects and technical leaders, fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and collective ownership of architectural standards.
• Experience creating forums and mechanisms that promote teamwork, continuous improvement, and innovation across distributed or matrixed technical teams.

Portfolio & Governance

• Experience providing technical leadership across portfolios, strategic programs, and functional domains.
• Strong understanding of technology governance, risk tolerances, exception processes, and compliance requirements.
• Skilled at mediating and escalating design disagreements to drive aligned outcomes.

Business & Technology Acumen

• Expertise in cloud modernization, Java, .Net, Kafka and NoSQL technical environments. 
• Ability to build and maintain strong business relationships and act as the first point of architectural guidance for the domain.
• Strong executive presence, including the ability and experience to build and deliver presentations, materials, and communication to executive level leadership.
• Leadership courage to respectfully challenge decisions when necessary and fully commit once decisions are made.