Director, Architect Principal - Digital Messaging

Charles Schwab; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with company match

Employee stock purchase plan

Paid vacation and sabbatical after 5+?

Parental leave and family benefits

Tuition reimbursement

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Job summary

Charles Schwab Technology Services is seeking a Digital Messaging Architect to define and drive the end-to-end architecture for the Digital Messaging platform, enabling scalable email, SMS, push notifications, and real-time event processing across cloud ecosystems.

You will lead cross-functional teams with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, and SRE, mentor engineers, and guide AI-tool adoption while upholding security and enterprise standards in a large financial services environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with architecture and distributed systems.
• Hands-on AI agent development using LangChain, Copilot Workspace, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar.
• Cloud platforms experience (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
• Secure coding practices and modernization of legacy apps.
• Ability to define and communicate strategy and vision across the enterprise.
• Experience supporting highly available, mission-critical environments.
• Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive target-state architecture for the Digital Messaging platform.
• Design scalable, resilient distributed systems using microservices and event streaming.
• Design and develop AI agents, including goals, tools, memory, and orchestration.
• Mentor development teams and promote best practices.
• Lead adoption of AI-based tools and development processes.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture to govern policies and standards.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Distributed systems

AI agent development

Cloud platforms

Secure coding practices

Legacy modernization

Strategy communication

High availability

Global-scale reasoning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent

Tools

LangChain

Copilot Workspace

AutoGen

CrewAI

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Job description

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 Technology Services enables the future of how clients manage their money by providing innovative and reliable technology products and services as a part of our ongoing commitment to democratize access to investing and financial planning.

The Digital Messaging Architect serves as a senior technical leader responsible for defining and driving the end-to-end architecture strategy for Schwab’s Digital Messaging platform. This role operates at an enterprise level, shaping highly scalable and resilient messaging solutions that support high-volume client communications (email, SMS, push notifications) and real-time event-driven processing.

This individual partners closely with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, and SRE teams to modernize platform capabilities, enable cloud adoption, and ensure alignment with enterprise architecture standards. You will leverage and provide leadership to the development teams in the usage of Generative AI tools throughout the full development lifecycle, while maintaining the highest standards of quality, security, and maintainability.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the target-state architecture for the Digital Messaging platform, including event-driven, cloud-native, and SaaS-integrated solutions
• Design highly scalable and resilient distributed systems using microservices and event streaming architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Design and develop AI agents, including defining agent goals, tool use, memory, and orchestration logic to automate complex engineering tasks
• Provide mentorship and leadership to the development teams, ensure they are following best practices
• Provide leadership on adoption of AI-based tools and development processes within the organization
• Partner with other architects, both within the local organization and across broader Schwab (e.g. Enterprise architecture) to lead the enterprise architecture strategy through policies, standards, and governance

What you have

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent
• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, with significant experience in architecture and distributed systems design
• Hands-on experience building and deploying AI agents using frameworks such as LangChain, Copilot Workspace, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar
• Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure)
• Knowledge of secure coding practices
• Experience modernizing legacy applications
• Demonstrated ability to define and communicate strategy and vision and influence across the Enterprise is essential
• Progressive experience supporting highly available, mission critical environments
• Expertise in problem solving and analyzing global scale distributed systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in large enterprise organizations
• 3+ years’ experience in Financial Services Industry

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

What’s in it for you

At Schwab, you’re empowered to shape your future. We champion your growth through meaningful work, continuous learning, and a culture of trust and collaboration—so you can build the skills to make a lasting impact. Our Hybrid Work and Flexibility approach balances our ongoing commitment to workplace flexibility, serving our clients, and our strong belief in the value of being together in person on a regular basis.

We offer a competitive benefits package that takes care of the whole you – both today and in the future:

• 401(k) with company match and Employee stock purchase plan
• Paid time for vacation, volunteering, and 28-day sabbatical after every 5 years of service for eligible positions
• Paid parental leave and family building benefits
• Tuition reimbursement
• Health, dental, and vision insurance