Your Opportunity
At Schwab, you’re empowered to make an impact on your career. Here, innovative thought meets creative problem solving, helping us challenge the status quo and transform the finance industry together.
We believe in the importance of in-office collaboration and fully intend for the selected candidate for this role to work on site in the specified location(s).
Charles Schwab is hiring aDirector, Software Development & Engineeringto play a critical leadership role in transforming the Portfolio Management Technology (PMT) organization as part of ourBroker‑Dealer Modernization (BDM)journey. This is not a traditional engineering leadership role, this leader is expected tofundamentally reset how software is built—moving the organization from a legacy, human‑heavy SDLC to aGenAI‑ and agentic‑AI‑driven development model. The industry, tooling, and economics of software development have changed. This role need to ensure PMT does not fall behind—and instead becomes amodel for AI‑driven engineering at Schwab.
What This Leader Will Do:
AI‑Driven Engineering Transformation (Primary Accountability)
- Lead the transformation of an established engineering organization from legacy, manual development practices to aGenAI‑first, agentic SDLC.
- Treat AI as acore production capability, not a side experiment—used across design, development, testing, modernization, documentation, and operations.
- Create amultiplier effectwhere teams deliver materially more outcomes with fewer people, higher quality, and faster cycle times.
- Drive measurable productivity gains (capacity unlock), enabling new BDM initiatives without proportional headcount growth.
- Establish clear expectations:every engineer, tech lead, and architect must leverage GenAI dailyto do their job.
Technology & Architecture Leadership
- Own the technology vision, roadmap, and outcomes for portfolio‑level Broker‑Dealer platforms, with a strong focus onBooks & Records, transactional systems, and modernization.
- Lead the next phase of modernization—moving beyond refactoring intoAI‑native architectures, automation, and intelligent workflows.
- Partner closely with Distinguished Engineers and architects to defineclear, opinionated architecture standardssupported and accelerated by GenAI.
- Ensure architecture, design documents, diagrams, and decision records areAI‑assisted, high‑quality, and produced quickly, not over long review cycles.
- Champion platform thinking that reduces fragmentation, simplifies legacy complexity, and accelerates delivery.
People Leadership & Delivery Accountability
- Build and leadhigh‑performing global engineering teamsacross the US and India, with a strong emphasis onAI‑era skills.
- Actively reshape team composition, roles, and expectations to reflectAI‑driven development realities.
- Build a strong leadership bench—Senior Managers, Tech Leads—who can lead through ambiguity and change.
- Hold teams accountable for outcomes, not activity, while maintaining trust and engagement.
- Create a culture ofcontinuous learning, experimentation, and execution with urgency.
Enterprise Influence & Collaboration
- Partner closely with Product, Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, and Operations to enable seamless modernization and delivery.
- Influence decisions across domains through credibility, clarity of thought, and execution—not hierarchy.
- Communicate complex technical and AI‑driven transformation topics inclear, compelling narrativesfor senior executives and engineering teams.
What Success Looks Like
- Engineering teams aresmaller, faster, and more effective.
- GenAI is embedded intoevery stage of the SDLC.
- BDM delivery capacity increases materially without equivalent headcount growth.
- Leaders and engineers think differently about how work gets done.
- BDSE becomes areference modelfor AI‑driven software engineering at Schwab.
What you have
Required:
- 10+ years of senior engineering leadership experience (Director or equivalent), includinginherited teams and legacy environments.
- Demonstrated success leadinglarge‑scale technology and cultural transformation, not just incremental improvement.
- Strong grounding inmodern software engineering practices and architectures.
- Hands‑on experience with GenAI and agentic AI toolsapplied to real development workflows—not theoretical exposure.
- Proven ability to drive change with urgency while maintaining delivery and stability.
- Experience modernizingcomplex, mission‑critical, and regulated systems.
Preferred:
- Track record ofresetting engineering mindsets—from legacy thinking to modern, automated, AI‑driven development.
- Systems thinker who understandspeople, process, architecture, and platform economicstogether.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity, but disciplined about execution and outcomes.
- Direct, transparent communicator who surfaces issues early and acts decisively.
- Recognized technical credibility—engineers trust your judgment and follow your lead.
- Experience or exposure to how top tech companies apply AI to software development at scale.
