What are the responsibilities and job description for the Executive Director, Application Architecture position at Request Technology, LLC?
Executive Director, Application Architecture
Salary: Open Bonus
Location: Chicago, IL
Hybrid: 3 days onsite, 2 days remote
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree
- Demonstrated experience defining and enforcing application architecture standards at organizational scale across complex, multi-system portfolios
- Deep hands-on background in application architecture — APIs, integration patterns, distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and microservices
- Experience with both legacy/brownfield modernization and greenfield cloud-native development
- Strong working knowledge of CI/CD, automated testing, and quality gate enforcement as architecture concerns
- Ability to lead through influence as well as authority — building alignment across Engineering, Security, QA, and Governance without losing the ability to make hard calls
- Excellent communication skills — able to represent architecture decisions to executive leadership and translate strategy into actionable standards for development teams
- Hands-on experience with Java, Kafka, Kubernetes, and cloud-native architectures on AWS or equivalent
- Experience with scaled agile frameworks (SAFe) in large enterprise delivery programs
- Familiarity with AI-assisted development practices and their implications for architecture and standards
Responsibilities
- Lead, develop, and set direction for a team of application architects, each retaining individual domain focus across clearing, risk, data, APIs, and integrations
- Establish and enforce architecture standards across applications, integration patterns, API design, tech stack selection, and software design patterns
- Enforce design patterns and architectural guardrails across teams delivering on both legacy and greenfield systems
- Establish non-functional requirements standards: performance, scalability, fault tolerance, observability as first-class architecture concerns
- Coordinate with Platform Architecture to ensure application designs reflect infrastructure reality and operational constraints
- Serve as the primary architecture partner to Engineering, Product, Financial Risk Management, and Quantitative Risk Management
- Collaborate with Security, QA, and Governance/Risk to ensure architectural decisions satisfy regulatory requirements including Regulation SCI and CPMI-IOSCO principles
- Conduct architecture and design reviews with enough rigor to catch problems before they reach production
- Manage and develop a team