Director of Architecture, Advisory Technology

Cushman & Wakefield•Chicago, IL

1d•$161,500 - $190,000

About The Position

Cushman & Wakefield is hiring a Director of Advisory Architecture to lead architecture for its advisory business, improve development tools and processes, and champion forward deployed engineering (FDE). The role combines solution and cloud architecture—including platforms such as Salesforce—with hands-on experience in agentic architecting and rapid, embedded development. Its goal is to help move fast prototypes and AI-assisted work into production without rework, while ensuring the architecture is sound. The Director owns the architecture, standards, and roadmap for advisory solutions; optimizes development tools and processes, including accelerators such as AI Studio; and leads an embedded FDE team that prototypes with brokers and delivery teams. The Director reports to the Head of Architecture and partners with Product, Business Analysis, Solution Architecture, and Engineering. Customers are internal brokers, employees, and contractors. The role leads a team of approximately four to six forward deployed engineers, architects, and UI/UX designers, with potential to grow. It requires people leadership as well as technical depth, including hiring, coaching, setting clear expectations, and coordinating with peer architecture leaders on shared standards and the transition of prototypes into production.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
10 or more years in solution or software architecture or engineering, including delivery of production systems at a large organization.
Experience architecting cloud-based business solutions, with hands-on knowledge of a CRM platform such as Salesforce, including its data model, flow automation, integrations, and security model.
Working knowledge of integration, data, security, and governance architecture disciplines, and the ability to keep fast development within established guardrails.
3 or more years leading and developing people, ideally including managers or senior individual contributors.
Experience prototyping with business users, presenting working software early, and adapting it in response to feedback.
Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development and agentic coding tools, and designing AI-enabled workflows such as agent orchestration and tool use, with awareness of their limits and risks.
Comfort with rapid-build approaches, including low-code, AI-assisted coding, and lightweight deployment, and ability to learn new tools quickly.
Strong communication with non-technical audiences, including senior leaders and revenue-generating teams.
Judgment to prioritize, say no, and explain trade-offs to stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience in commercial real estate, professional services, or another broker- or advisor-driven business.
Background as a forward deployed engineer, solutions engineer, or in a similar customer-embedded role.
Hands-on use of AI-assisted coding and rapid build-and-deploy tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Replit, or Railway.
Salesforce expertise beyond the basics, such as Flow, Lightning Web Components, Apex, or Salesforce certifications.
Experience partnering with UX and design teams to shape broker-facing tools.
Familiarity with CI/CD and source control practices for CRM platforms.
Experience building a new team or capability inside an established enterprise.

Responsibilities

Own the target architecture, standards, and roadmap for advisory solutions, ensuring designs are sound, secure, and consistent with company architecture standards.
Continuously improve tools, templates, and ways of working that shorten the development lifecycle from idea to production, including accelerators such as AI Studio.
Define how AI agents are used to draft requirements, design solutions, and generate code, with human review, clear patterns, and quality controls.
Lead and grow an embedded FDE team that builds working solutions with brokers and delivery teams, iterates on live feedback, and determines with business sponsors whether efforts are productized, handed off, or retired.
Work with peer architecture leaders and Engineering to establish prototype guardrails, a production promotion gate, and shared source control, environments, and standards.
Partner with Product to define criteria for FDE requests versus the standard requirements, design, and build path, and manage FDE capacity.
Identify recurring patterns and bring them to Product as potential roadmap features.
Track broker adoption, time from idea to release, time saved, the share of prototypes reaching production, and rework required.
Advocate visibly for the capabilities of the FDE model and accelerators, and help Engineering and Architecture colleagues use them to reduce ambiguity and delay.
Hire and coach team members, emphasizing judgment, range, and the ability to work comfortably with non-technical users.
Partner with Product leadership, business analysts, solution architects, and Engineering leadership on intake, triage, requirements, architecture patterns, production hardening, release, and support.