Chief Architect, Infrastructure & Enterprise Architecture
LendingClub
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Job summary
Happen Bank seeks a Chief Architect to define and lead the Bank's enterprise architecture strategy, standards, and infrastructure architecture. This hands‑on leadership role focuses on cloud, platform infrastructure, and reference architectures to enable secure, scalable engineering.
You will guide the Architecture Guild, mentor senior architects, and ensure architectural decisions meet security, regulatory, and delivery needs in a hybrid SF environment.
Qualifications
- 13+ years of experience in software or infrastructure engineering or related tech roles.
- 5+ years in a principal/chief/head‑of‑architecture role within a complex org.
- Bachelor's degree or higher, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Deep hands‑on expertise in infrastructure architecture, including AWS, networking, identity, containers and orchestration, IaC, resilience, and DR.
- Proven ability to lead architects across organizational boundaries and influence without direct reports.
- Experience managing senior technical contributors.
- Strong data architecture, data modeling, integration patterns, and modern data platforms.
- Experience delivering tech in regulated financial services (OCC, FFIEC, BSA/AML or similar).
- Ability to establish enterprise architecture standards and balance rigor with delivery speed.
- Excellent technical communication and collaboration with Security, Risk, and Regulatory partners.
- Comfort with AI-assisted architectural design and governance and data governance.
Responsibilities
- Define and maintain the enterprise target‑state architecture aligned with business objectives.
- Lead the architecture review process with clear context, alternatives, and tradeoffs.
- Establish and maintain enterprise technology standards catalog and decision processes.
- Partner with Security, Risk, and Regulatory Relations on architecture considerations.
- Serve as principal infrastructure architect for cloud topology, network segmentation, compute platforms, resilience, DR, capacity, and cost.
- Develop reference architectures and design docs for Engineering teams to adopt.
- Lead architecture for major platform initiatives (e.g., data platform migration to Databricks).
- Lead the federated Architecture Guild and mentor architects across units.
- Drive architectural debt reduction and improve efficiency and sustainability of technology.
Skills
Education
Tools
Job description
Happen Bank (formerly LendingClub) is built around a simple purpose: to clear the way to help people turn intention into action, and action into financial progress. That means offering focused products, a frictionless mobile-first experience, and clear terms with no gotchas. Respect and fairness is part of our DNA, and that ideal shapes how we work, how we treat each other, and how we invest in our employees and our community. Join us in using data, bold thinking, and a commitment to innovation to help clear the way for millions of Americans to achieve more.
Happen Bank is seeking a Chief Architect to define and lead the Bank's enterprise architecture strategy, technical standards, and infrastructure architecture. This is a hands‑on leadership role, with approximately one-third of the position focused on designing cloud and platform infrastructure, reviewing critical technical decisions, and developing reference architectures that enable Engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable solutions.
- Define and maintain Happen Bank's enterprise target-state architecture, aligning the long-term technical vision with business objectives and the Architecture Guild.
- Lead the architecture review process, providing direction and resolving complex cross-domain design decisions while ensuring decisions are documented with clear context, alternatives, and tradeoffs.
- Establish and maintain the enterprise technology standards catalog, including approved and retiring patterns, exception processes, and decision-making authority.
- Partner with Security, Risk, and Regulatory Relations to ensure architecture decisions incorporate appropriate security, control, and regulatory considerations.
- Serve as the Bank's principal infrastructure architect, providing hands‑on technical leadership across cloud topology, network segmentation, compute and runtime platforms, resilience, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and cost architecture.
- Develop reference architectures, detailed design documents, and working implementations that Engineering teams can adopt, partnering with infrastructure teams to deliver reusable tooling and solutions aligned with security and compliance standards.
- Lead architecture for major platform initiatives, including the data platform migration to Databricks, ensuring technical decisions support long‑term scalability, reliability, and business needs.
- Lead the federated Architecture Guild, establishing recurring design forums, shared standards, cross‑team peer reviews, and consistent architecture practices across business units.
- Provide functional leadership and mentorship to architects embedded within business‑unit Engineering organizations, partnering with Engineering leaders to ensure architectural coverage and alignment between current and future‑state designs.
- Drive architectural consistency while preserving business‑unit autonomy and delivery velocity, using clear standards and guardrails rather than unnecessary approval bottlenecks.
- Identify and address architectural debt, duplicated capabilities, and cross‑domain design challenges to improve the efficiency and sustainability of the technology environment.
- Manage, coach, and develop the Shared Architecture team, including Data Architecture, Data Modeling, and Integration Architecture capabilities.
- Establish clear priorities, delivery expectations, and accountability for architecture designs, standards, and enablement, recognizing the team's impact extends beyond directly delivered software features.
- Foster a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, sound judgment, and continuous improvement across the Shared Architecture team and broader Architecture Guild.
- 13+ years of experience in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, or related technology roles, including 5+ years in a principal, chief, or head‑of‑architecture position within an organization of comparable complexity.
- Bachelor's degree or higher, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Deep, current, hands‑on expertise in infrastructure architecture, including public cloud environments (AWS preferred), networking, identity, containers and orchestration, infrastructure as code, resilience, and disaster recovery.
- Demonstrated success providing technical leadership to architects across organizational boundaries, including influencing teams and individuals without direct reporting relationships.
- Experience directly managing and developing senior technical individual contributors.
- Strong working knowledge of data architecture, data modeling, integration patterns, and modern data platforms, with the technical judgment to review and challenge complex designs.
- Experience delivering technology in a regulated financial services environment, including familiarity with OCC, FFIEC, BSA/AML, or equivalent regulatory expectations and their implications for architecture, examinations, and audits.
- Proven ability to establish enterprise architecture standards, lead complex design decisions, and balance technical rigor, regulatory requirements, and delivery speed.
- Strong technical communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence Engineering leaders, architects, Security, Risk, and Regulatory Relations partners.
- You take ownership of complex technical decisions, apply sound judgment when navigating ambiguity, and establish clear standards that enable teams to operate independently while maintaining architectural consistency.
- You build functions that evolve, including how AI can improve architectural design, engineering practices, and technical decision‑making.
- You maintain a high standard for responsible use, data governance, security, and human oversight while helping teams adopt new capabilities thoughtfully.
- Experience leading architecture within a federated, guild, or chapter operating model.
- Experience developing architecture patterns that support AI‑native workloads and applying AI within enterprise architecture.
- Experience defining architecture standards that have successfully supported regulatory examinations.
- Experience operating across both large, established institutions and high‑velocity product engineering environments.
SanFrancisco. The above locations are eligible offices for this role. The locations have been determined to foster in‑person collaboration with this role’s team or the related business lines. We utilize a hybrid work model, and our teams are in‑office Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. In‑person attendance is essential for this role’s success, and remote placement will not be considered.
The target base salary range for this position is 260,000-290,000. The base salary of the role will be determined by job‑related knowledge, experience, education, skills, and location. Base salary is just one part of Happen Bank's Total Rewards package. You may also be eligible for long‑term awards (equity) and an annual bonus (which is based on company performance, employee performance and eligible earnings).
- Medical, dental and vision plans for employees and their families.
- 401(k) match.
- Health and wellness programs.
- Flexible time off policies for salaried employees.
- Up to 16 weeks paid parental leave.
- More benefits as part of our competitive benefits package.
Happen Bank offers relocation, based on actual job level.
Local hours (PT). While the position will primarily work local hours, Happen Bank is headquartered in Pacific Time and our ideal candidate will be flexible working across time zones when necessary.
As needed travel to Happen Bank offices and/or other locations, as needed.
For select roles and locations, candidate interviews may be recorded, transcribed and summarized by tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) to assist our hiring managers with the application process. You will have the opportunity to opt out of recording, transcription, and summarization prior to any scheduled interviews. We will not discriminate against you if you choose to opt out.
During the interview, we will collect the following categories of personal information from or about you: contact information, identifiers, professional and employment‑related information, sensory information (audio/video recording), and any other categories of personal information you choose to share with us.
We will use this information to evaluate your application for employment. We will only share your interview, transcription, or summary with persons whose expertise or technology is necessary to process your application, evaluate your fitness for a position, and administer or support the tool. We will not sell your personal information or disclose it to any third party for their marketing purposes.
For more information about how we will handle your personal information, please refer to our Privacy Disclosure. We will delete any recording of your interview promptly but in no event later than 30 days after making a hiring decision.
Happen Bank is an equal opportunity employer and dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.
We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
We believe that a variety of perspectives will make our teams and business stronger as we work together to transform the traditional banking system.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application process. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please contact us at interviewaccommodations@happen.com.
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