Director, Blockchain Platform Architecture

Charles Schwab; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with company match

Sabbatical after 5 years

Parental leave

Tuition reimbursement

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Job summary

Charles Schwab’s Technology Services Research & Development team is seeking a Blockchain Platform Architect to define architecture for enterprise-grade blockchain and digital asset platforms. You will translate opportunities into secure, scalable platform designs moving from prototype to enterprise adoption.

You will partner with engineering, security, risk, legal, compliance, product, and business stakeholders to ensure designs meet security, governance, and resiliency requirements while

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a related technical field (advanced degree a plus).
• 10+ years of experience in software engineering including delivering platforms, or complex technology initiatives.
• Strong technical foundation in modern architectures, cloud-native development, and engineering best practices; ability to guide technical decisions without needing to be the primary implementer.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across organizational boundaries and collaborate effectively with Product, Risk, Legal/Compliance, Security, and business stakeholders.
• Excellent communication skills—able to align leaders, and convey technical tradeoffs clearly.
• Deep experience designing and operating enterprise platforms, distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, APIs, event-driven patterns, observability, resiliency, and DevSecOps practices.
• Strong understanding of blockchain fundamentals, distributed ledger technologies, consensus mechanisms, cryptography, smart contracts, tokenization concepts, node operations, custody models, and digital asset transaction flows.
• Experience applying security and control patterns such as authentication, authorization, encryption, key management, secrets management, secure coding, vulnerability management, monitoring, and incident response readiness.
• Ability to work across ambiguous, emerging technology spaces while producing practical architecture artifacts, decision frameworks, and implementation guidance.
• Clear communication skills with the ability to influence engineers, architects, product partners, risk stakeholders, and senior leaders.

Responsibilities

• Own the target-state architecture and technical roadmap for blockchain and digital asset platform capabilities, including platform components, service boundaries, integration patterns, APIs, data models, and operational controls.
• Design secure, scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems that support experimentation, pilot delivery, and production use.
• Evaluate blockchain protocols, node infrastructure, custody patterns, smart contract frameworks, interoperability models, and blockchain data access strategies.
• Partner with engineering teams to guide implementation, review designs, resolve complex technical tradeoffs, and establish reusable platform patterns.
• Collaborate with security, risk, legal, compliance, and enterprise architecture teams to ensure platform designs meet enterprise controls, regulatory expectations, defense-in-depth principles, and operational resilience requirements.
• Define architecture documentation, reference models, decision records, design standards, and graduation criteria needed to move capabilities from prototype to sustainable ownership.
• Serve as a technical advisor to the Director of Technology and executive stakeholders by translating blockchain architecture choices into business value, risk implications, investment needs, and adoption paths.

Skills

Blockchain fundamentals

Distributed ledger

Cloud-native

Security & risk

DevSecOps

Leadership

API design

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE

Advanced degree beneficial

Job description

Charles Schwab’s Technology Services Research & Development team is seeking a Blockchain Platform Architect to define architecture for enterprise-grade blockchain and digital asset platforms. You will translate opportunities into secure, scalable platform designs moving from prototype to enterprise adoption.

You will partner with engineering, security, risk, legal, compliance, product, and business stakeholders to ensure designs meet security, governance, and resiliency requirements while