Vice President, Data Architecture

Fidelity Investments • Durham, NC

3d

About The Position

Fidelity is seeking an experienced architect to lead a team of data architects within Asset Management Technology. The role provides technology leadership and sets architectural strategy across Research, Portfolio Management, and Trading functions supporting $7 trillion in assets. The leader will direct the data architecture practice, guide AI-ready platform development, establish governance frameworks, and build a high-performing architecture team to address complex data challenges in financial services.

The position defines and promotes data architecture strategy aligned with business objectives, leads governance and standards for data platforms, and drives cross-functional initiatives with product management, engineering leaders, and business stakeholders. It also calls for hands-on leadership in designing, prototyping, and contributing code to complex solutions; designing enterprise-scale data platforms and pipelines; creating reference architectures and accelerators; and leading technical reviews to ensure solutions meet scalability, security, compliance, maintainability, and other non-functional requirements.

Fidelity’s Asset Management Technology group supports its investment management business. Its Architecture team provides technical vision and leadership for key initiatives and helps deliver complex, critical solutions. Fidelity describes an ongoing phased transition to a full-time onsite working model, with onsite expectations varying by role and location and likely to evolve. Fidelity will not provide immigration sponsorship for this position. Hiring may be restricted for individuals with certain criminal histories due to applicable laws and regulations.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical field.
• At least 5 years leading, mentoring, and developing technical teams, including experience building teams or transforming underperforming teams.
• Experience demonstrated through successful hiring, strong retention, and team members' career progression to senior or principal roles.
• Proven ability to mentor architects and senior engineers, developing individuals from mid-level to staff or principal levels.
• Executive-level communication skills, including presenting to senior audiences, explaining technical concepts in business terms, articulating risk-reward trade-offs, and building stakeholder consensus.
• Expert-level proficiency in SQL, PL/SQL, and modern data programming languages, including Python, Scala, and Java; ability to review code, conduct technical interviews, and contribute to critical implementations.
• Deep experience with modern data engineering tools, including Spark, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, Snowflake, Databricks, AWS Glue, Lambda, Step Functions, and Kinesis, with understanding of enterprise-scale operations, failure modes, and cost implications.
• Expertise in DataOps and continuous delivery for data platforms, including infrastructure as code with Terraform or CloudFormation, CI/CD for data workflows, automated testing for data quality, schema validation and lineage, and observability instrumentation.

Nice To Haves

• Master's degree or MBA.
• Advanced degrees or certifications in Data Science, Machine Learning, or Systems Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Define and evangelize data architecture strategy across Asset Management Technology, aligning technical direction with business objectives and competitive advantage.
• Lead architecture governance and establish data-platform design patterns, best practices, and guardrails, including semantic and data access layers for AI-ready platforms.
• Drive cross-functional data initiatives with product management, engineering leadership, and business stakeholders; translate requirements into architectural roadmaps and delivery plans.
• Build and develop data architecture teams through hiring, onboarding, career development, and succession planning.
• Mentor architects and foster technical excellence and continuous learning.
• Lead hands-on design, prototyping, and code contributions for complex, critical data challenges.
• Design and optimize enterprise-scale data platforms, including ETL/ELT pipelines, data access layers, and polyglot persistence strategies for transactional, operational, and analytical workloads.
• Establish reference architectures and accelerators that promote consistent security, observability, performance, and operational resilience while reducing time to market.
• Lead technical deep dives and design reviews, unblock teams, validate approaches, and ensure solutions satisfy non-functional requirements such as scalability, security, compliance, and maintainability.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director