Director, Principal Platform Architect

Charles Schwab Inc.; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Charles Schwab Corporation is seeking a Director, Principal Platform Architect to shape resilient, scalable enterprise platforms. This senior IC role guides architecture strategy across mission-critical environments and leverages AI to drive automation, observability, and operational excellence.

You will define target-state architectures, oversee platform modernization, and mentor architects while collaborating with executives and cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Extensive enterprise architecture experience with high-availability platforms.
• Strong stakeholder-management across diverse teams and execs.
• Clear, concise communication of complex options to leadership.
• Experience applying AI to platform engineering and operations.

Responsibilities

• Define target-state architectures and roadmaps for mission-critical platforms.
• Lead architecture decisions across resiliency, hosting, and modernization.
• Assess platforms for availability, recoverability, observability, and readiness.
• Modernize enterprise batch environments: scheduling, dependencies, monitoring.
• Evaluate hosting strategies across on-prem, cloud, hybrid, containers.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI to automate and optimize operations.
• Define platform capabilities for responsible AI, governance and lifecycle management.
• Translate technical options into clear recommendations for executives.
• Lead cross-functional architecture reviews and mentor engineers.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

Stakeholder management

Executive communication

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree

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 part of our ongoing commitment to democratize access to investing and financial planning.

We are seeking a Director, Principal Platform Architect to help shape the future of resilient, scalable, and intelligent enterprise platforms. This senior individual-contributor role combines deep technical expertise with enterprise leadership and offers the opportunity to influence architecture strategy across mission-critical technology environments.

You will define target-state architectures, guide major platform decisions, and help translate strategy into practical roadmaps and measurable outcomes. The ideal candidate brings demonstrated experience in enterprise resiliency, batch processing, hosting platforms, and applied AI, along with the executive communication and stakeholder leadership skills needed to drive complex, cross-functional decisions.

Position Responsibilities:

• Define target-state architectures, reusable patterns, and transition roadmaps for mission-critical enterprise platforms.
• Lead architecture decisions across resiliency, batch processing, enterprise hosting, and platform modernization.
• Assess platforms for availability, recoverability, failure isolation, dependency management, observability, scalability, and operational readiness.
• Guide the modernization of enterprise batch environments, including workload orchestration, scheduling, dependencies, restart and recovery, and monitoring.
• Evaluate workload-placement and hosting strategies across on-premises, cloud, hybrid, container, virtualized, and managed-platform environments.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI to platform engineering and operations, including automation, observability, incident response, capacity management, operational analytics, architecture decision support, and developer productivity.
• Define the platform capabilities needed to support responsible AI adoption, including secure infrastructure, data access, integration, resiliency, governance, observability, and lifecycle management.
• Translate complex technical options, risks, and tradeoffs into clear recommendations and actionable plans.
• Lead cross-functional architecture reviews and guide solutions from strategy through implementation and operational ownership.
• Mentor architects and engineers while creating reusable guidance that strengthens the broader architecture practice.

What you have

Required Qualifications:

• 12 or more years of progressive technology experience, including significant enterprise or solution architecture experience.
• Demonstrated experience architecting mission-critical platforms with defined availability, recovery, observability, failure isolation, auditability, and operational ownership.
• Deep experience in enterprise resiliency, including high availability, disaster recovery, dependency analysis, resilience testing, and operational readiness.
• Experience with enterprise batch architecture, including scheduling, orchestration, dependencies, restart and recovery, monitoring, and modernization.
• Broad knowledge of enterprise hosting technologies, including on-premises infrastructure, cloud, hybrid platforms, containers, virtualization, networking, storage, and identity.
• Demonstrated ability to identify and apply AI capabilities to improve platform engineering, automation, resiliency, architecture, and operations.
• Broad understanding of the infrastructure, data, integration, security, governance, observability, and lifecycle capabilities needed to support production AI solutions.
• Experience developing pragmatic architecture roadmaps that address legacy constraints, operational dependencies, technology risk, and modernization priorities.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex architecture decisions and move solutions from concept through implementation.
• Ability to present architecture strategies, risks, and recommendations clearly and concisely to executive audiences.
• Strong stakeholder-management skills across organizations with different priorities, incentives, and constraints.
• Demonstrated ability to resolve technical and organizational conflict constructively while maintaining effective working relationships.
• Ability to challenge assumptions, surface risks early, and guide teams toward clear decisions, ownership, and next steps.
• Comfort operating independently in ambiguous and evolving environments.
• Ability to influence through technical credibility, structured thinking, partnership, and communication.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in financial services or another highly regulated industry.
• Experience with large-scale platform modernization, infrastructure migration, or resiliency programs.
• Knowledge of public-cloud architecture, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, DevSecOps, and policy automation.
• Advanced certification in cloud, infrastructure, security, resiliency, data, or AI.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Cybersecurity, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

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