Director – Architect Principal

Your Opportunity

This role is designed for in-office collaboration and is based on site in Southlake, 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.

 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. 

As an Architect Principal, you will operate at the intersection of business strategy, technology transformation, and enterprise governance. This role requires a leader who can influence architecture direction across multiple business domains and technology ecosystems, balancing modernization, innovation, operational excellence, and regulatory requirements. You will help shape Schwab's technology future by guiding the evolution of legacy platforms, accelerating cloud adoption, and enabling responsible enterprise AI capabilities.

In this role, you will:

Enterprise Architecture & Strategy 

• Provide enterprise-wide architecture leadership across business and technology domains, ensuring alignment between business strategy, architecture standards, and technology investments.
• Partner with business, product, and engineering leaders to define multi-year technology roadmaps and target-state architectures.
• Lead architecture reviews and decision-making processes that balance innovation, risk management, regulatory requirements, and operational resiliency.

Modernization & Public Cloud Architectures

• Lead enterprise technology transformation initiatives spanning legacy modernization, cloud-native adoption, platform evolution, and emerging AI capabilities.
• Define and evangelize application modernization patterns and practices.
• Shape enterprise MCP, API, and integration strategies.
• Design scalable architectures supporting high-volume, mission-critical business capabilities

AI & Emerging Technologies

• Evaluate, shape, and guide enterprise AI and agentic AI strategies and architectures.
• Establish and govern AI and public cloud application patterns and reference architectures. 

Modern Engineering Practices

• Advance developer productivity through modern tooling, the evolution of the AIDLC operating model, and AI enablement, including roles and responsibilities such as FDE.

Core Skill Set and Expertise:

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

What you have

Required: 

• 10+ years of experience in enterprise application and platform architecture.
• Proven leadership in large-scale modernization initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience in modern distributed, cloud, and AI architectures.
• Strong experience defining architecture standards and ensuring adherence through effective governance.
• Ability to influence senior leaders and translate complex systems into clear architectural direction.
• Good understanding of modern delivery practices including Agile, DevSecOps, and AI DLC.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

Preferred:

• Experience in financial services or other highly regulated industry.
• Industry-recognized architecture certifications (TOGAF, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or other).
• Experience mentoring and developing architects and technical leaders