Director, Architecture Lead

Director, Architecture Lead

At BNY, our culture allows us to run our company better and enables employees' growth and success. As a leading global financial services company at the heart of the global financial system, we influence nearly 20% of the world's investible assets. Every day, our teams harness cutting-edge AI and breakthrough technologies to collaborate with clients, driving transformative solutions that redefine industries and uplift communities worldwide.

Recognized as a top destination for innovators, BNY is where bold ideas meet advanced technology and exceptional talent. Together, we power the future of finance – and this is what #LifeAtBNY is all about. Join us and be part of something extraordinary.

BNY is seeking a Director-level Architect to lead enterprise architecture for Compliance Engineering with deep technical expertise in banking payments (SWIFT, ACH, RTP) and strong knowledge of Financial Crime (with emphasis on Anti-Money Laundering, and Market Abuse). This leader will define and drive high-performance, resilient, and compliant technology designs, collaborating across engineering, data, compliance, and business stakeholder groups to deliver secure, scalable, and standards-aligned solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Leadership

• Define end-to-end target and transitional architectures for payments and compliance platforms, integrating SWIFT, ACH, RTP, and related rails.
• Establish and maintain reference architectures, design patterns, and guardrails that meet performance, resiliency (RTO/RPO), security, and compliance objectives.
• Lead architecture reviews, threat modeling, and resiliency assessments; ensure adherence to standards and best practices.

Design, Documentation, and Communication

• Rapidly produce high-quality designs, diagrams, sequence and data flow models, and documentation that are clear, consistent, and actionable.
• Communicate complex topics simply for compliance, business stakeholders, and regulators; engage in deep technical discussions with developers, data engineers, and SREs.
• Translate regulatory requirements (e.g., AML/KYC, data retention, transaction monitoring) into technical designs and control implementation guidance.

Payments and Financial Crime Expertise

• Architect solutions for transaction monitoring, surveillance, and other core Compliance capabilities.
• Partner with Financial Crime teams to design detection, investigation, and reporting capabilities; align technology to typologies and risk indicators.
• Ensure designs meet or exceed standards for security, privacy, auditability, traceability, and regulatory expectations.

Data Architecture and Quality

• Define critical data elements (CDEs), data models, lineage, mapping, and data quality rules for payments and compliance domains.
• Drive metadata management, master/reference data strategies, and robust data controls across ingestion, processing, storage, and consumption.
• Collaborate with data engineering for scalable pipelines, streaming, and batch processing; ensure data reliability, timeliness, and completeness.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work across Compliance Engineering and partner platforms/practices to deliver integrated solutions; facilitate design decisions and trade-offs.
• Mentor architects and engineers; cultivate a collaborative, high-performing culture aligned to BNY principles (Be Client Obsessed, Spark Progress, Own It, Stay Curious, Thrive Together).
• Contribute to roadmap planning, capacity and cost optimization, and operational excellence.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years in software/solution/data/enterprise architecture with prior hands-on engineering experience (e.g., application development, integration, data engineering).
• Proven delivery of large-scale, mission-critical payment systems and/or financial crime platforms in regulated financial services environments.
• Technical Depth
• Deep understanding of payment rails and formats (e.g., SWIFT MT/ISO 20022, NACHA/ACH, RTP), messaging, clearing/settlement flows, and exception handling.
• Strong data architecture expertise: relational and distributed databases, schema design, CDE definition, data quality, lineage, mapping, and governance.
• Integration patterns (APIs, event streaming, messaging), microservices, and distributed systems performance and resiliency engineering.
• Security and compliance controls: encryption, key management, identity/authorization, logging/monitoring, auditability, and regulatory reporting.
• Communication & Leadership
• Excellent written and verbal communication; adept at simplifying complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences and regulators.
• Effective collaborator and influencer; able to lead design forums, resolve technical conflicts, and drive consensus across teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Education:
  
  Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• Certifications:
  
  Relevant cloud (e.g., Azure/AWS), data (e.g., data management/governance), security (e.g., CISSP), AML/Financial Crime (e.g., CAMS) are a plus.
• Tooling…