Product Architect, Senior Specialist

Job Description

• Vanguard has a Senior Solutions Architect/Brokerage Platform opportunity with our Personal Investor Technology team. We are looking for someone with broad and deep brokerage platform domain experience. Brokerage is at the core of Vanguard’s mission to give investors the best chance of investment success. Through our retail brokerage offer, clients have access to products and services that help them to achieve their investment goals. Not only does the self-directed client base rely on the Retail Brokerage Platform, Vanguard’s advice technology also is dependent on a modern, scalable set of brokerage capabilities. The Brokerage Platform Architect is a critical role that requires brokerage technology expertise to drive a modernized architecture that can scale well into the future.

  In this role, you will:

  • Provide the architectural leadership in shaping firm or business unit-wide, transformational, business technology solutions, with an emphasis on application architecture. Solutions Architects possess broad and deep business domain knowledge and application portfolio knowledge and play a key role in defining the future state of large, business technology programs.

  • Define data driven applications to support trading technologies, with clearly defined boundaries across various ecosystems, business units, and channels, using mature communication protocols.

  • Gain a deeper understanding of our current VG brokerage products to help drive the design of our new brokerage offerings.

  • Utilize a broad and deep understanding of the competitive landscape and corporate and business unit strategies to provide context for architectural decision making.

  • Define standards for event driven architecture, to interoperate with various LOBs.

  • Within area of responsibility, continuously pursue expert-level knowledge of business technology solutions and maintains understanding of applicable technologies, tools, and services:

  • Establish working relationships with appropriate business technology solution providers (e.g., BETANxt, Broadridge, Salesforce, Charles River, Reuters, etc.).

  What it takes:

  • Broad and deep knowledge in brokerage platform domain

  • Experience in Brokerage Industry (Middle Office) Trading Platform / Order Management Systems

  • Deep modern architecture understanding (event based, streaming data, cloud services database architecture)

  • Experience integrating with Market Data providers (FIS, Refinitiv/BETANxt, Bloomberg, Broadridge, etc.,)

  • Thorough understanding of Trade Order Lifecycle (Order Entry, Execution and Trade Settlement) preferred

  • Domain knowledge and experience in developing and servicing Brokerage Account capabilities using REST APIs, middleware solutions, databases etc

  • Minimum of eight years related work experience, with at least three years of technology architect experience.

  • Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience. Graduate degree preferred.

Core Responsibilities

1. Leads the definition of product roadmaps and architecture for a product family, according to business strategies and enterprise architecture

2. Collaborates with the broader architecture community to ensure that their products align with target architectures and technology roadmaps and provides input on required platform capabilities and improving development tools/processes

3. Works with other product teams, technology experts, and business stakeholders to provide functional support

4. Assists in the evaluation of vendors and products and participates in build vs. buy discussions with the product teams

5. Acts as highest-level technical expert, resolving issues, assessing any potential risks and identifying solutions

6. Leads the discussions related to key product architecture decisions. Identifies new opportunities to improve products and provide input and support to the business

7. Develops and reviews product architecture and design documentation

8. Provides technical guidance to product team(s) as appropriate

9. Performs feasibility analysis on potential future projects

10. Assists in the development of and management of architecture governance process(es)

11. Tracks industry trends and maintains knowledge of new technologies

12. Mentors less experienced crew members and contributes to overall development of the organization

13. Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Minimum of eight years related work experience, with at least three years of technology architect experience.

• Undergraduate degree or equivalent combination of training and experience. Graduate degree preferred.

• Additional Job Description

  There are three key objectives that we are seeking for this person to lead, design, and influence our direction on, and they are as follows:

  1. Understand our modernization and align the capabilities against our vendors (BETA’s) modernization efforts.

  2. Develop roadmaps that capture our current state and future state evaluation. Evaluate and document our current state brokerage system, identify gaps, and design a future state best in class brokerage solution.

  3. Collaborate with engineering, product teams, and leaders to ensure future architectural solutions help support, drive, and enables future state capabilities (ZeroOps, etc.).

  Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

  Special Factor

  Vanguard is not offering visa sponsorship for this position.

Special Factors

Sponsorship

About Vanguard

We are Vanguard. Together, we’re changing the way the world invests.

For us, investing doesn’t just end in value. It starts with values. Because when you invest with courage, when you invest with clarity, and when you invest with care, you can get so much more in return. We invest with purpose – and that’s how we’ve become a global market leader. Here, we grow by doing the right thing for the people we serve. And so can you.

We want to make success accessible to everyone. This is our opportunity. Let’s make it count.

Inclusion Statement

Vanguard’s continued commitment to diversity and inclusion is firmly rooted in our culture. Every decision we make to best serve our clients, crew (internally employees are referred to as crew), and communities is guided by one simple statement: “Do the right thing.”

We believe that a critical aspect of doing the right thing requires building diverse, inclusive, and highly effective teams of individuals who are as unique as the clients they serve. We empower our crew to contribute their distinct strengths to achieving Vanguard’s core purpose through our values.

When all crew members feel valued and included, our ability to collaborate and innovate is amplified, and we are united in delivering on Vanguard's core purpose.

Our core purpose: To take a stand for all investors, to treat them fairly, and to give them the best chance for investment success.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.