Head of Architecture

About the Company

A global software organization serving the financial services industry is conducting a confidential search for a seasoned Head of Architecture. This executive will drive architectural strategy across a suite of complex financial technology platforms. The ideal candidate will combine deep technical expertise with strong leadership skills to shape long-term product evolution, modernize architectural practices, and guide the organization through continued growth and transformation.

About the Role

The Head of Architecture will function as the senior-most architectural authority within the company's investment and financial operations technology portfolio. This leader will define the future-state architecture, establish modern standards and frameworks, and guide a distributed architecture organization toward building reliable, scalable, secure, and high-performing software systems for global clients.

Responsibilities

Architectural Leadership & Strategy (Majority of role)

• Define the organization's future-state architecture across multiple software platforms, ensuring technical direction aligns with business strategy and customer needs.
• Lead the architectural roadmap for financial and investment technology solutions, ensuring modern design principles are used across data, application, and integration layers.
• Mature the architecture function by evolving frameworks, methodologies, governance approaches, and engineering best practices.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and trends with potential impact on financial technology, such as cloud-native architectures, advanced analytics, automation, data platforms, and secure-by-design engineering.

Technology Governance & Global Leadership

• Implement a unified architecture governance model to ensure cross-product consistency, technical integrity, and alignment with compliance and security requirements.
• Provide leadership and mentorship to architects and technical leaders across multiple regions, fostering knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and consistent standards.
• Work closely with Product, Engineering, and Executive teams to translate business requirements into scalable technical designs and architectural strategies.
• Proactively identify risks related to scalability, complexity, technical debt, and modernization needs, and lead initiatives to mitigate them.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software development and architecture, with at least 5 years in a senior or enterprise architecture leadership role within a global or large-scale technology organization.
• Strong familiarity with technology platforms supporting financial services, investment operations, trading, risk, or related domains.
• Demonstrated success leading architecture teams distributed across multiple geographic locations.
• Deep expertise in modern software architecture, including cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), microservices, API strategy, data architecture, and platform modernization.
• Experience implementing architecture frameworks such as TOGAF or similar.
• Excellent communication skills and proven ability to engage executive stakeholders and simplify complex technical topics.

Education & Certifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Industry credentials such as cloud architecture certifications or TOGAF are preferred but not required.

Travel: Some international collaboration required.