Global Head – Architecture

Jobtailor; New Jersey; On-site; USD 250,000 - 450,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking an accomplished technology leader to shape the enterprise technology direction for a regulated financial-services estate. You will drive architecture and strategy, working with senior engineers, platform teams, and product partners to translate strategy into realizable designs that run in production.

You will lead through influence, manage multi-year roadmaps, and ensure security, data protection, and regulatory risk are embedded in every decision.

Qualifications

• Experience in banking/regulated financial services architectures and systems.
• Proven ability to shape multi-year technology strategies and roadmaps.
• Ability to define reference architectures and architectural guardrails.
• Experience with distributed, event-driven, data-intensive platforms.
• Understanding of security, data protection, and regulatory risk considerations.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and multi-region designs.
• Ability to explain complex technical decisions to business and regulatory audiences.
• Experience in AI-enabled systems: explainable, auditable, and safe.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Head of Technology to shape technology direction for enterprise solutions.
• Ground technology strategy in engineering reality, regulatory constraints, and outcomes.
• Turn strategy into designs with input from senior engineers and product partners.
• Lead engineering influence across multiple teams without direct line management.
• Involve early in high-risk initiatives and major incidents and recovery efforts.
• Balance long-term strategy with near-term delivery, resilience, and compliance.
• Represent technology direction to clients and senior stakeholders with clear trade-offs.

Skills

Banking domain experience

Production systems ownership

Cloud platforms

Architectural guardrails

Event-driven architecture

Data-intensive systems

Explainable AI

Regulated environments

Security and controls

Regulatory risk awareness

AWS

Azure

GCP

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Responsibilities

• Partner closely with the Head of Technology for Enterprise Solutions in shaping the technology direction of a complex, regulated financial-services estate.
• Ensure technology strategy is grounded in engineering reality, deep domain understanding, and operational outcomes.
• Work directly with the Head of Technology to shape and refine strategy, stress‑testing ideas against engineering, regulatory, and operational constraints.
• Engage closely with senior engineering leaders, platform teams, and product partners to turn strategy into real designs that can be built and run.
• Involve early in complex or high‑risk initiatives and step in when it matters most, including during major incidents and recovery efforts.
• Act as the engineering authority across Enterprise Solutions, leading primarily through influence rather than line management.
• Balance long‑term strategy with near‑term delivery constraints, operational resilience, and regulatory expectations.
• Represent the technology direction with clients and senior stakeholders, explaining design choices and trade‑offs clearly and credibly.

Requirements

• 25+ years of experience building and operating systems in tier‑1 banks, capital markets infrastructure, or similarly regulated, high‑availability environments.
• Has owned or deeply influenced production systems under real load, is comfortable reading and writing code, and works effectively alongside senior engineers.
• Experienced in setting technology strategy and architecture for complex, regulated, data‑driven platforms, with strong experience in banking and financial services (public and private markets, syndicated lending, securities processing, counterparty and client lifecycle, regulatory reporting, or similar domains).
• Experienced in defining and owning multi‑year technology strategies and roadmaps, setting clear priorities and sequencing change based on business outcomes, regulatory needs, and engineering reality.
• Sets and governs reference architectures, design standards, and architectural guardrails, ensuring teams build in a consistent, scalable, and sustainable way.
• Strong understanding of how financial products, operational workflows, data, and controls work end‑to‑end, and uses that understanding to make sound system and platform design decisions.
• Has demonstrated strong judgment designing distributed, event‑driven, and data‑intensive systems, including how they scale, fail, recover, and isolate risk.
• Experienced with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and the trade‑offs around managed services, multi‑region and multi‑tenant designs, data residency, cost, performance, and resilience.
• Knowledge of advanced and new architectures and design paradigms e.g. agent‑based systems, service abstractions, semantic data models, knowledge graphs, and where to apply or not.
• Experienced in ensuring AI‑enabled systems are explainable, auditable, and operationally safe, with clear judgment on when AI is appropriate versus deterministic or rules‑based approaches.
• Strong understanding of analytics and AI in production (e.g. data quality, anomaly detection, fraud/AML, workflow automation) and understands what it takes to run these reliably in regulated environments.
• Designs with security and controls built in, with a strong understanding of identity, data protection, failure containment, and regulatory risk.
• Acts as a coach and multiplier for senior engineers and architects, raising the bar through hands‑on problem solving, design reviews, and practical guidance rather than formal line management.
• Pragmatic, direct, and outcome focused.
• Leads through earned credibility and influence, is comfortable shaping decisions without authority, and communicates complex technical topics clearly to business, client, and regulatory audiences.
• Measures success by outcomes and evidence, not intent or presentation: technology strategy that translates into systems that work in production, reduce late‑stage surprises and repeat incidents, scale and recover as designed, and stand up to real operational and regulatory scrutiny.