Chief Architect, Infrastructure & Enterprise Architecture

LendingClub•San Francisco, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Happen Bank is seeking a Chief Architect to define and lead the Bank's enterprise architecture strategy, technical standards, and infrastructure architecture. This is a hands-on leadership role, with approximately one-third of the position focused on designing cloud and platform infrastructure, reviewing critical technical decisions, and developing reference architectures that enable Engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable solutions. You'll lead a federated Architecture Guild across business units and directly manage the Shared Architecture team, establishing clear standards, design governance, and alignment across the organization. Working closely with Engineering, Security, Risk, and Regulatory Relations, you'll ensure architecture decisions balance delivery speed, technical quality, and regulatory requirements.

Requirements

13+ years of experience in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, or related technology roles, including 5+ years in a principal, chief, or head-of-architecture position within an organization of comparable complexity
Bachelor's degree or higher, or equivalent combination of education and experience
Deep, current, hands-on expertise in infrastructure architecture, including public cloud environments (AWS preferred), networking, identity, containers and orchestration, infrastructure as code, resilience, and disaster recovery
Demonstrated success providing technical leadership to architects across organizational boundaries, including influencing teams and individuals without direct reporting relationships
Experience directly managing and developing senior technical individual contributors
Strong working knowledge of data architecture, data modeling, integration patterns, and modern data platforms, with the technical judgment to review and challenge complex designs
Experience delivering technology in a regulated financial services environment, including familiarity with OCC, FFIEC, BSA/AML, or equivalent regulatory expectations and their implications for architecture, examinations, and audits
Proven ability to establish enterprise architecture standards, lead complex design decisions, and balance technical rigor, regulatory requirements, and delivery speed
Strong technical communication and collaboration skills with the ability to influence Engineering leaders, architects, Security, Risk, and Regulatory Relations partners
You take ownership of complex technical decisions, apply sound judgment when navigating ambiguity, and establish clear standards that enable teams to operate independently while maintaining architectural consistency
You build functions that evolve, including how AI can improve architectural design, engineering practices, and technical decision-making. You maintain a high standard for responsible use, data governance, security, and human oversight while helping teams adopt new capabilities thoughtfully

Nice To Haves

Experience leading architecture within a federated, guild, or chapter operating model
Experience developing architecture patterns that support AI-native workloads and applying AI within enterprise architecture
Experience defining architecture standards that have successfully supported regulatory examinations
Experience operating across both large, established institutions and high-velocity product engineering environments

Responsibilities

Define and maintain Happen Bank's enterprise target-state architecture, aligning the long-term technical vision with business objectives and the Architecture Guild
Lead the architecture review process, providing direction and resolving complex cross-domain design decisions while ensuring decisions are documented with clear context, alternatives, and tradeoffs
Establish and maintain the enterprise technology standards catalog, including approved and retiring patterns, exception processes, and decision-making authority
Partner with Security, Risk, and Regulatory Relations to ensure architecture decisions incorporate appropriate security, control, and regulatory considerations
Serve as the Bank's principal infrastructure architect, providing hands-on technical leadership across cloud topology, network segmentation, compute and runtime platforms, resilience, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and cost architecture
Develop reference architectures, detailed design documents, and working implementations that Engineering teams can adopt, partnering with infrastructure teams to deliver reusable tooling and solutions aligned with security and compliance standards
Lead architecture for major platform initiatives, including the data platform migration to Databricks, ensuring technical decisions support long-term scalability, reliability, and business needs
Lead the federated Architecture Guild, establishing recurring design forums, shared standards, cross-team peer reviews, and consistent architecture practices across business units
Provide functional leadership and mentorship to architects embedded within business-unit Engineering organizations, partnering with Engineering leaders to ensure architectural coverage and alignment between current and future-state designs
Drive architectural consistency while preserving business-unit autonomy and delivery velocity, using clear standards and guardrails rather than unnecessary approval bottlenecks
Identify and address architectural debt, duplicated capabilities, and cross-domain design challenges to improve the efficiency and sustainability of the technology environment
Manage, coach, and develop the Shared Architecture team, including Data Architecture, Data Modeling, and Integration Architecture capabilities
Establish clear priorities, delivery expectations, and accountability for architecture designs, standards, and enablement, recognizing the team's impact extends beyond directly delivered software features
Foster a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, sound judgment, and continuous improvement across the Shared Architecture team and broader Architecture Guild