Principal Platform Architect

Who We Are

Apex Fintech Solutions (AFS) powers innovation and the future of digital wealth management by processing millions of transactions daily, to simplify, automate, and facilitate access to financial markets for all. Our robust suite of fintech solutions enables us to support clients such as Stash, Betterment, SoFi, and Webull, and more than 20 million of our clients' customers.

Collectively, AFS creates an environment in which companies with the biggest ideas in fintech are empowered to change the world. As a global organization, we have offices in Austin, Dallas, Chicago, New York, Portland, Belfast, and Manila.

If you are seeking a fast-paced and entrepreneurial environment where you'll have the opportunity to make an immediate impact, and you have the guts to change everything, this is the place for you.

AFS has received a number of prestigious industry awards, including:

• 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018 Best Wealth Management Company - presented by Fintech Breakthrough Awards
• 2021 Most Innovative Companies - presented by Fast Company
• 2021 Best API & Best Trading Technology - presented by Global Fintech Awards

About This Role

This is an incredible opportunity for a Principal Platform Architect to join Apex's Engineering team. As an Architect you will work closely with engineering, product, and business teams to create a world class API and product experience. You will lead customer facing information architecture while driving company wide engineering initiatives. Where possible you will be a direct technical contributor that will shift between low level design and high level concepts. You will implement repeatable software delivery practices and processes so that we can readily deliver quality products at Apex.

We're looking for someone who:

• Is experienced and introspective: Extensive experience developing software products and services across a variety of tools, frameworks, and environments, recognizing strengths and knowing when to seek help.
• Is passionate: Genuine passion for solving interesting technology problems with creative and simple solutions.
• Is pragmatic: Prioritizes delivering a 40% solution in 2 weeks over an 80% solution in six.
• Is collaborative: Excited to work with fellow engineers and partner across departments to achieve goals.
• Desire to make an impact: Aims to use technology to improve customer experience and company bottom line, while also mentoring and coaching team members.

What you will do all day:

• Understand Apex’ broad product portfolio and lead design of a resilient, customer focused client-facing API and integration experience.
• Develop and design application delivery rails that enable Apex’s products and services to be delivered to the market in a standardized way.
• Ensure that our API based solutions deliver value throughout the customer journey.
• Oversee architectural design groups that develop “best in class” engineering practices for our services by ensuring that service and components are well defined, modularized, secure, reliable, reusable, diagnosable, and actively monitored.
• Lead an architecture council to drive technical decisions and ensure that services fit within our overall architecture vision.
• Build software prototypes and conduct experiments to evaluate alternative architectures.
• Grow and mentor developers to develop best-practices and collectively collaborate across teams to build and integrate innovative products.
• Adhere to and drive modern software engineering practices through code and design reviews, and by using data/telemetry to make decisions.
• Build collaborative and productive relationships with development, product and program managers along with broader business stakeholders to define Apex’ developer experience strategy and help accomplish key business objectives.
• Provide project progress reports to project team, stakeholders, management, and executives.
• Have strong understanding of business and technical problems that teams are solving, able to work with stakeholders and teams to prioritize, clarify, and organize team’s work based on this knowledge.
• Identify risks, perform risk analysis, effectively manage risks; proactively raise prioritization and scheduling tradeoff decisions, escalating and identifying alternate options as appropriate; Follow defined Risk Management processes.
• Assess existing processes and identify opportunities for improvement.

A few reasons why you might love us:

• Leader in space: Apex is recognized for disrupting the financial services industry, enabling fintech standouts like Stash, Robinhood, and Betterment, with a proven track record of success and fostering ongoing innovation.
• See tech differently: Work with leaders in the tech industry, passionate about finding new ways to use technology to solve customer problems.
• Immediate impact: Your work will have a direct impact on the tech department and clients; you won't be just another talented engineer.

The skills you’ll need to succeed:

• Proven track record of navigating the company and influencing and inspiring peers.
• Readiness to travel occasionally.
• Experience gathering and translating business and technical requirements.
• Strong sense of personal accountability.
• Experience in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or similar cloud platform.
• Deep expertise in Java (or other modern software languages like .NET or Go).
• Experience with REST and microservices.
• Expertise in Agile and other software development methodologies and practices.
• Financial services background preferred.

The experience benchmarks we’re looking for:

• BA, BS, MS, PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience.
• Domain knowledge in large scale API integrations.
• Domain knowledge in financial information architecture.
• Engineering process and methodology for large scale design, development, project execution and integration.
• Demonstrated leadership abilities in creating clarity, generating energy, and delivering success.
• Demonstrated ability to lead with integrity and remain calm during stressful situations while managing multiple demands and priorities.
• Demonstrated technical leadership to provide technical guidance on technology issues, designs, and ideas.

Our Rewards

We offer a robust package of employee perks and benefits, including healthcare benefits (medical, dental and vision, EAP), competitive PTO, 401k match, parental leave, and HSA contribution match. We also provide our employees with a paid subscription to the Calm app and offer generous external learning and tuition reimbursement benefits. At AFS, we offer a hybrid work schedule for most roles that allows employees to have the flexibility of working from home and one of our primary offices.

Salary Range

The annual base salary range for this position is $166,100-$207,625. Exact compensation offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and office location.

Key skills/competency

• Platform Architecture
• API Design
• Microservices
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Java
• Software Engineering
• Agile Methodologies
• Financial Services
• Technical Leadership
• Risk Management