Senior Director, Solutions Architect (Global Wealth Services)

Apex Fintech Solutions•Austin, TX

1d•$220,000 - $275,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Senior Director, Solutions Architect, you will play a multi-faceted role in ensuring that Apex meets the feature, regulatory and client experience demands of our technology services. This role, in particular, focuses on the expansion of Apex’s forward-looking Ascend platform to non-US localities while continuing to support current US-based processing, continuing the trusted attention to local regulatory best practices, coupled with disruptive, market-defining technology, as established by Apex’s US value proposition. This role demands strategic vision (informed by experience), leadership and influence prowess, and a hands-on approach to drive the implementation of market leading processing solutions in Apex’s strategic Ascend platform.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent work experience) required
12+ years of prior work experience in a leadership role in delivering large-scale, complex Financial Services solutions in an agile environment.
6+ years of people management experience
Experience working in international financial services, encompassing multiple markets and regulatory environments.
Extensive knowledge of Clearance, Custody and Trade Execution processing requirements in Financial Services.
Understanding of the processing differences versus traditional investment products like equities.
Demonstrated understanding of global regulatory standards in banking and wealth management (e.g., US SEC/FINRA, UK FCA, EU regulations, APAC regulations).
Track record of designing solutions to accommodate international tax and reporting requirements for cross-border wealth clients.
Deep understanding of integration architectures: APIs, microservices, data migration, ETL, and middleware relevant to financial services.
Strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to inspire and lead teams in an agile environment.
Strong ability to listen, but also to question assumptions.
Excellent written and oral communication skills and ability to adapt storytelling to different audiences based on their priorities and level of knowledge.
Experience in building and managing high-performing teams within agile development frameworks.
Familiarity with agile development methodologies and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
Excellent problem-solving abilities and attention to detail, with a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating regression risks within an agile environment.
Understanding of user experience, web development, API standards, and Agile practices, with a strong preference for best practices and incremental delivery.
Ability to make decisions with imperfect information, lead without authority and be comfortable managing a team through ambiguity and complexity.

Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership: Collaborate closely with business SMEs, Relationship Managers, the service delivery organization and the technology organization to deliver local/regional Ascend solutions to create a one-of a kind global wealth processing platform.
Develop and forcefully champion a strong, opinionated perspective on trade execution, custody, and clearance architecture. Don't just understand these systems—decisively shape them.
Guide team members – collaboratively -- with clear, authoritative direction on outcomes, making confident judgments that others can follow.
Develop cross-functional solutions based upon little direction (essentially, develop a plan from 0 to 1) yet seek validation via business SMEs and other Product Managers.
Interface with clients from both a tactical and strategic perspective on our existing Ascend processing capabilities and understand evolving local needs, competitive requirements, and best practices.
As a champion of the Ascend platform, raise issues or concerns to Senior Management, whether for production service experience or development challenges. Once identified, endeavor to resolve issues by identifying responsible parties and relentlessly seeking closure.
Client-facing Leadership: In conjunction with Sales and Relationship Management, engage with client stakeholders (product and technology leadership, operations, compliance) to capture business goals, regulatory needs, and localization requirements for each target market.
Facilitate workshops and interviews to understand client pain points, current workflows, and desired outcomes in local contexts.
Present solution concepts, architecture diagrams, and realistic, timeline-informed roadmaps to both business and technical client audiences, adapting the language and approach as needed.
Deliver product demos and proof-of-concept presentations tailored for local market features and workflows.
Lead solution validation sessions—walk clients through proposed interaction points and feature designs; gather feedback for localization or compliance adjustments.
Collect and act on client feedback post-launch, facilitating enhancements and rapid iterations to ensure continued local/regional compliance.
Build trusted relationships with client teams, acting as a strategic advisor for ongoing and future localized needs.
Team Leadership: Act as a quarterback for our strategic global investments; lead, mentor, and inspire a team of product, engineering, and testing professionals towards the incremental and iterative delivery of solutions, continuing the configuration-driven processing architecture which is the foundation of the Ascend platform.
Foster a culture of quality, innovation, and accountability across technology and business partners, promoting agile principles such as iterative development and frequent feedback loops.
Establish clear goals and performance metrics to evaluate solution readiness, with a focus on acceptance testing criteria, automated end-to-end test coverage and agility in responding to changing requirements.
Identify and escalate blockers quickly towards resolution
Execution Leadership: Ability to articulate an executable, cross-platform plan for delivering local clearing and custody solutions on Ascend, with enough clarity to engage other domain teams in understanding the outcomes required.
Continue to maintain architectural governance of the platform while adding localized configurations and processing to all feature domains.
Closely collaborate with other Product Managers and Business SMEs during the definition of cross-domain changes.
Fill in knowledge gaps and question assumptions as required.
Work with Product Execution team (technology program management) to ensure all initiatives are transparently tracked according to Apex standards.
Oversee the planning, execution, and analysis of end-to-end test scenarios, prioritizing testing efforts based on risk and impact analysis.
Ensure thorough test coverage across all components and integrations of the platform, with a focus on identifying and mitigating regression risks of the client-facing API and UI surface.
Collaboration and Communication: Collaborate closely with product management, development teams, and other stakeholders to prioritize testing activities and resolve issues within agile development sprints.
Communicate status, risks, and recommendations to senior management and project stakeholders.
Facilitate knowledge sharing and cross-functional collaboration to foster a culture of quality ownership within an agile development framework.