Senior Architect

About the 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).

Workplace Services Engineering (WSE) is an organization within Schwab Technology Services that is embarking on a major transformation. We support Workplace Services, and we’re shaping the future of how people experience financial well‑being at work. We partner with leading employers to deliver innovative retirement, equity, and workplace financial solutions that help millions of participants build stronger financial futures. This is a fast‑growing, high‑impact business where scale meets purpose—where your work directly influences how people plan, save, invest, and succeed.

As a key growth engine for the firm, we’re investing more than ever to expand our capabilities, modernize platforms, and elevate the experiences we deliver to employers and their employees. Our teams work at the intersection of technology, service, and financial expertise—supporting workplace clients with solutions that scale, adapt, and deliver meaningful outcomes. Here, your ideas help shape what’s next for workplace financial services. If you’re energized by solving complex problems, collaborating across disciplines, and making a real difference in the workplace services industry, you’ll find your place here.

About the Role

We’re seeking a Senior Architect to provide technical leadership, architecture direction, and hands-on guidance across multiple Agile teams. This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of retirement technology and drive innovation across critical initiatives that impact millions of participants.

What You’ll Do

• Define target architectures, evolve domain boundaries, and establish integration patterns for modern, cloud-ready platforms.
• Ensure services are secure, resilient, observable, and performant, meeting regulatory and audit standards.
• Operate within a SAFe Agile Release Train, aligning roadmaps with architecture runway and managing cross-team dependencies.
• Partner with Product, Engineering Leaders, and Risk/Compliance to deliver incremental value with high quality and compliance.
• Mentor engineers and tech leads, elevate engineering practices, and drive continuous modernization of platforms and data.

Why This Role Matters

You’ll be at the forefront of transforming the PCRA experience, from frictionless account opening to advanced trade rule governance and digital asset integration. This is a rare chance to combine architecture leadership with financial innovation, shaping the next era of retirement solutions.

What You Have (Required Qualifications)

• 8+ years in software engineering with 5+ years building and evolving microservice architectures and leading technical direction for multiple teams in a SAFe or similar scaled‑Agile environment
• Advanced proficiency with Java/Spring Boot, RESTful API design, inter‑service communication, and event‑driven patterns; strong familiarity cloud‑ready designs
• Experience with Spring Cloud Data Flow, Oracle, Bamboo, Docker, GCP, AWS, and SALT
• Hands‑on experience with SQL Server (modeling, query optimization, performance tuning) and working knowledge of Oracle; understanding of transactional integrity, concurrency, and data reliability patterns
• Demonstrated use of observability stacks (metrics/logging/traces), capacity/performance testing, resiliency techniques, and production incident analysis to drive architectural improvements
• Practical experience embedding security by design (authn/authz, token/claims, encryption in transit/at rest), managing data concerns, and meeting audit/traceability requirements
• Ability to articulate architectural trade‑offs to leadership and engineers, build consensus across Product/Engineering/Risk, and convert strategy into clear, executable guardrails and patterns

What You Have (Preferred Qualifications)

• Experience modernizing legacy platforms to cloud‑ready architectures; familiarity with containers/orchestration, API gateways, caching, and messaging/streaming
• Exposure to financial services or other regulated domains; understanding of controls and change governance

Compensation & Perks

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

Key skills/competency

• Senior Architect
• Software Engineering
• Microservices Architecture
• SAFe Agile
• Java Spring Boot
• RESTful API Design
• Cloud-Ready Architectures
• Observability
• Security by Design
• Financial Services