Architect Lead

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).

 

The Client Experience Technology (CET) organization is responsible for delivering and operating critical client-facing digital platforms that enable money movement, retirement distributions, inheritance journeys, and advisor-assisted experiences. These platforms support millions of client interactions and are foundational to the firm's digital strategy.

We are seeking an experienced Technical Program Manager (TPM) to drive delivery excellence, organizational effectiveness, and strategic execution across a growing portfolio of applications and initiatives. This individual will partner closely with engineering, product, architecture, operations, and business leaders to coordinate complex programs, improve execution predictability, strengthen operational rigor, and accelerate innovation.

The TPM will play a pivotal role in managing programs across multiple Lines of Business, serving as a trusted partner to leadership while ensuring successful delivery of strategic priorities, operational excellence initiatives, and engineering transformation efforts.

 

What You'll Do

Strategic Program Leadership

• Lead planning, execution, and delivery of complex cross-functional technology programs across multiple business and technology domains.
• Partner with engineering, product, architecture, and business stakeholders to align priorities, objectives, and delivery commitments.
• Develop and maintain program roadmaps, milestones, execution plans, and leadership communications.
• Drive alignment across teams and manage dependencies that span multiple organizations, platforms, and initiatives.
• Proactively identify risks, issues, constraints, and tradeoffs while facilitating decision-making and mitigation planning.
• Translate strategic goals into actionable delivery plans and measurable outcomes.

Operational Excellence & Portfolio Management

• Coordinate organizational planning activities, including OKRs, quarterly planning, roadmap reviews, and portfolio governance.
• Drive resiliency planning, operational readiness reviews, risk assessments, and service health initiatives.
• Establish and maintain executive dashboards, scorecards, and portfolio metrics that provide visibility into organizational health and delivery progress.
• Support portfolio tracking, Agile execution, and governance processes to improve delivery predictability and accountability.
• Leverage automation, AI-powered insights, and data-driven reporting to streamline operational processes and reduce administrative overhead.
• Ensure consistent program reporting and communication across leadership, product, and engineering teams.

Technical Program Management

• Manage interdependencies across engineering teams, products, platforms, and organizational boundaries.
• Facilitate planning and execution activities across development, quality engineering, architecture, operations, and support teams.
• Drive execution discipline through effective planning, prioritization, dependency management, and release coordination.
• Partner with engineering leaders to identify opportunities to improve delivery velocity, software quality, operational efficiency, and team effectiveness.
• Support modernization initiatives that improve platform scalability, resiliency, maintainability, and operational performance.

Engineering Effectiveness & AI Adoption

• Partner with engineering leadership to identify, prioritize, and implement opportunities that improve developer productivity and organizational efficiency.
• Drive adoption of AI-enabled tools, automation capabilities, and engineering best practices that enhance software delivery, testing, operational support, and decision-making.
• Establish metrics and reporting frameworks to measure engineering effectiveness, productivity improvements, operational outcomes, and AI adoption success.
• Coordinate pilot programs and innovation initiatives focused on improving developer experience and accelerating delivery.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, and technology innovation across the organization.

Stakeholder & Executive Engagement

• Serve as a trusted advisor to engineering, product, and business leadership.
• Deliver clear and concise executive communications, program updates, portfolio health assessments, and strategic recommendations.
• Facilitate discussions around priorities, tradeoffs, resource planning, and organizational objectives.
• Translate complex technical concepts into business-focused outcomes and recommendations.
• Build strong partnerships across organizations to drive alignment and execution excellence.

Team Coordination & Organizational Effectiveness

• Coordinate leadership reviews, planning events, all-hands meetings, and team engagement activities.
• Foster collaboration across geographically distributed teams and partner organizations.
• Improve organizational communication, transparency, and execution effectiveness through structured program management practices.
• Support the development of processes and operating rhythms that strengthen team alignment and accountability.

What you have

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience leading large-scale technical programs in complex enterprise environments.
• Proven experience managing cross-functional initiatives involving engineering, product, operations, and business stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of Agile delivery methodologies, software development lifecycles, and program management practices.
• Experience managing roadmaps, executive reporting, risk management, dependency management, and delivery governance.
• Demonstrated ability to influence stakeholders and drive results in highly matrixed organizations.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, analytical, and organizational skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities while maintaining focus on strategic outcomes.

 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience supporting large-scale client-facing digital platforms.
• Experience driving operational excellence, resiliency, modernization, or engineering transformation initiatives.
• Familiarity with portfolio management, metrics reporting, executive dashboards, and Agile planning tools.
• Experience leveraging AI, automation, and analytics to improve software engineering productivity, operational efficiency, and business outcomes.
• Experience working in highly regulated or complex business environments.
• Demonstrated passion for innovation, continuous improvement, and organizational effectiveness.

 

Success in This Role:

• Drive predictable and transparent delivery across a complex technology portfolio.
• Strengthen organizational planning, governance, and execution discipline.
• Improve visibility through meaningful metrics, dashboards, and executive reporting.
• Enhance engineering effectiveness through improved coordination, prioritization, and operational rigor.
• Accelerate adoption of AI-enabled capabilities that improve developer productivity, operational efficiency, resiliency, and delivery velocity.
• Build strong partnerships across engineering, product, operations, and business teams.
• Enable the organization to scale effectively while supporting growing business demand and strategic priorities.

 

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