Sr. Director, Architecture & Research

WEX•Lower Macungie Township, PA

About The Position

We are seeking a Senior Director of Architecture & Research to define and lead the architectural vision, cloud strategy, and applied innovation for our Health & Benefits technology ecosystem. This role is accountable for the technical foundations, operating model, and future direction of mission-critical SaaS platforms supporting Consumer Driven Health, Benefits Administration, HSA, COBRA, and Direct Billing. Reporting to the VP of Architecture & Development, this leader will influence architectural outcomes across a global enterprise. The role demands deep technical authority, business fluency, and the ability to inspire large teams through clarity and credibility. This role is accountable for the following strategic pillars: Enterprise & Cloud Platform Architecture: Defining the end-to-end architecture of a large-scale, mission-critical SaaS platform, ensuring systems are highly available, secure, compliant, scalable, cost-efficient, and operable by design. This includes ownership of Azure cloud architecture, multi-region and Active-Active strategies, infrastructure automation, and platform engineering foundations that support reliability at enterprise scale. DevOps, Platform Engineering & Operational Excellence: Establishing DevOps and platform engineering as a core operating model, enabling teams to build, test, deploy, and operate software safely and efficiently. This pillar covers CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated resilience, observability, and release safety, with the goal of maximizing developer velocity while maintaining production stability. World-Class User Experience (UX) Enablement: Ensuring architecture actively enables exceptional user experiences for members, employers, administrators, and operators. This includes designing platforms that support low latency, personalization, accessibility, consistency across products, and seamless AI-assisted experiences—recognizing that UX quality is a direct outcome of architectural and platform decisions. API, Integration & Developer Ecosystem: Owning the strategy for API-first design, developer experience, and ecosystem integration. This includes building and governing a modern Developer Center, defining API standards and contracts, and enabling secure, scalable integrations with employers, carriers, payroll providers, financial institutions, and third-party partners. Data Platforms & Intelligence Foundations: Leading the architecture of enterprise data platforms that power reporting, analytics, regulatory compliance, and AI. This includes operational and analytical data stores, data pipelines, governance, quality, and lineage—treating data as a strategic product that fuels insight and automation. AI Platforms, Agentic AI & Intelligent Automation: Driving the vision and execution for AI-native platforms and agentic AI systems that augment and automate complex health and benefits workflows. This pillar includes governed AI platforms, model orchestration, human-in-the-loop controls, and the responsible application of AI to improve decision-making, efficiency, and customer experience. Security, Privacy, Compliance & Trust: Embedding security-by-design, privacy-by-design, and compliance into every platform and architectural decision. This includes HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2 Type II, and emerging AI regulations, ensuring innovation never compromises trust. Business Alignment & Industry Leadership: Serving as a strategic partner to Product, Engineering, Operations, and Executive leadership, translating technology decisions into business outcomes. Representing the company externally as a technical and industry leader, articulating platform maturity, reliability, and innovation to customers, partners, and peers. In this role, you will define: What “best-in-class SaaS” means for Health & Benefits How millions of users experience our products How developers build and extend our platforms How partners integrate and scale with us How data and AI drive smarter, faster decisions How trust, reliability, and innovation coexist at enterprise scale

Requirements

Senior Technical Leadership: 10+ years of experience in software engineering and architecture, including 5+ years leading architecture, platform, or senior engineering functions in large-scale technology organizations. Proven ability to influence architectural direction across hundreds of engineers without relying on direct reporting lines.
Cloud & Platform Architecture (Azure): Deep experience designing and operating cloud-native platforms on Microsoft Azure, including multi-region architectures, identity and network design, data residency, and cost governance. Strong understanding of how cloud architecture choices impact reliability, scalability, security, and developer velocity.
Distributed Systems & Reliability Engineering: Demonstrated success architecting highly available, resilient, and scalable distributed systems, including Active-Active designs, automated failover, and systems that support extreme load variability (e.g., seasonal spikes, high-volume transactions).
DevOps, Automation & Platform Engineering: Strong background in DevOps as an operating model, including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, and deployment safety. Experience enabling platform engineering practices that abstract infrastructure complexity and improve developer productivity.
Data Platforms & Databases: Solid architectural experience designing and evolving enterprise data platforms, including: Transactional and operational data stores (e.g., SQL Server, MongoDB) Analytical and reporting platforms (e.g., Snowflake) Data pipelines, governance, and data quality practices. Ability to design data architectures that support regulatory reporting, analytics, and AI workloads.
API-First & Integration Architecture: Proven experience defining API-first architectures and integration strategies that support internal teams, external partners, and third-party ecosystems. Strong understanding of API design, versioning, governance, and integration patterns (event-driven, synchronous/asynchronous).
User Experience Awareness: Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Product and Design leaders to ensure architecture enables great user experiences. Understanding of how latency, data models, workflow design, and platform constraints directly impact usability, accessibility, and customer trust.
Security, Privacy & Compliance: Experience architecting systems in highly regulated environments, with working knowledge of HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2 Type II, and secure-by-design principles. Ability to embed security, privacy, and compliance into architectural decisions from the start.
Communication & Executive Influence: Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to executive, business, and technical audiences. Proven track record of influencing senior leaders and aligning diverse stakeholders around a shared technical vision.

Nice To Haves

AI Platforms & Agentic AI: Experience leading or architecting AI platforms and/or agentic AI systems, including AI-native architectures, model orchestration, governance, and human-in-the-loop controls. Familiarity with modern LLM ecosystems and applied AI in complex, regulated domains.
Applied Innovation & R&D Leadership: Background leading research, innovation, or advanced engineering teams, with demonstrated ability to move from experimentation to production-scale impact.
Health, Benefits, Insurance, or FinTech Domain Expertise: Prior experience in Health & Benefits, Insurance, or Financial Services environments, particularly those involving complex rules, payments, and regulatory oversight.
Developer Experience & Tooling: Experience improving developer experience (DX) through strong APIs, documentation, tooling, and internal developer platforms or portals.
Technical Thought Leadership: Evidence of technical thought leadership such as conference speaking, publications, open-source contributions, or patents.
Transformation at Scale: Experience leading cloud, DevOps, or platform transformations in large, distributed organizations.

Responsibilities

Enterprise Architecture & Platform Strategy
Azure Cloud Architecture & Cloud Operating Model
DevOps, Platform Engineering & Automation
Extreme Reliability, Availability & Operational Excellence
World-Class User Experience (UX) Enabled by Architecture
API Platforms, Developer Experience & Developer Center
Integrations & Ecosystem Architecture
Data Platforms & Analytics Architecture
AI Platforms, Agentic AI & Applied Intelligence
Security, Privacy, Compliance & Responsible AI
Organizational Leadership & Technical Culture
Business Partnership & Executive Influence
External Thought Leadership & Industry Engagement

Benefits

WEX's comprehensive and market competitive benefits are designed to support your personal and professional well-being. Benefits include health, dental and vision insurances, retirement savings plan, paid time off, health savings account, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, and more.

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