Director, Distributed Systems

Hightower Advisors•Chicago, IL

1d•$160,000 - $180,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Founded in 2008, Hightower is a wealth management firm that provides investment, financial and retirement planning services to individuals, foundations and family offices, as well as 401(k) consulting and cash management services to corporations. Hightower’s capital solutions, operational support services, size and scale empower its vibrant community of independent-minded wealth advisors to grow their businesses and help their clients achieve their financial vision. Based in Chicago with advisors across the U.S., we operate as a registered investment advisor (RIA). The Director of Distributed Systems reports to the Managing Director, Head of Software Engineering. You will architect the firm’s real-time event-driven backbone and broader AWS cloud ecosystem, encompassing distributed messaging and diverse web-based patterns. Leading an engineering team while remaining a primary hands-on architect, you’ll solve complex challenges in latency, highly scalable architectures, and API design. As the technical authority, you’ll leverage native AWS primitives to build a performant, observable platform, orchestrating seamless workflows across Product, Operations, and Data Engineering teams to scale our technical foundation.

Requirements

Engineering Depth: 8-10 years of experience in distributed systems engineering and enterprise architecture with deep, hands-on expertise in API design, event-driven architectures, and modern cloud-native patterns on the AWS platform.
Infrastructure Mastery: Deep expertise in modern messaging and integration technologies, including asynchronous event streaming, API-as-a-product strategies, and high-performance data interoperability.
Domain Expertise: Extensive experience in wealth management, fintech, or financial services, demonstrating a deep understanding of complex financial data flows, regulatory technical constraints, and the interoperability requirements of industry-standard platforms.
Lead by Example: Proven leadership and exceptional communication skills, with extensive experience managing technical teams while maintaining the ability to lead by example through direct technical contribution.
Systemic Problem Solving: Strong analytical skills to diagnose complex issues across distributed systems, coupled with expertise in fault-tolerant design, distributed tracing, and observability practices.

Responsibilities

Build and mentor a high-performing software engineering team, fostering technical excellence while maintaining hands-on involvement in complex development challenges and architectural decisions.
Partner with business stakeholders and product managers to map end-to-end processes, identifying integration points that unlock operational efficiency and enable new product capabilities.
Implement monitoring and observability frameworks with the Infrastructure Engineering and IT Operations team to proactively identify integration issues, optimize performance, and ensure SLA compliance across all connected systems.
Lead technical discovery and hands-on proof-of-concept initiatives for new platforms and tools, evaluating build-vs-buy decisions and recommending integration strategies that balance speed with sustainability.

Benefits

Coverage on the first day of employment for medical, dental, and vision insurance
Paid parental leave (16 weeks for primary caregiver and 8 weeks for secondary caregiver)
Mother’s lounge onsite
Flexible PTO plan
Hybrid work schedule (minimum of 3 days in office)
Free brand-new gym in the Chicago office
401k matching plan
HSA employer contributions
Student loan assistance
Pet insurance
Base salary of $160,000-$180,000 plus discretionary bonus (exact base salary amount will be dependent on experience)