Chief Architect

Chief Architect

Janney is an award-winning full-service financial services firm committed to understanding our clients' needs and providing advice beyond investments. We are equally committed to building a diverse workforce and inclusive culture where employees can use their talents to thrive and grow professionally with the firm.

Janney is hiring a Chief Architect to lead Enterprise Architecture for the firm – and to lead something newer and just as important: our push into applied AI and automation. You'll set the technical standards and reference patterns that guide how Janney builds technology, and you'll personally build and lead a small, high-caliber team of forward-thinking AI engineers who use AI to take on some of the firm's biggest business challenges.

This is a hands-on leadership role, and a highly visible one. You'll work directly with senior business leaders across wealth management, brokerage, and operations – not as a gatekeeper they have to get past, but as a trusted advisor they bring in early because your input makes their ideas better. Think of yourself as running an in-house consultancy: business leaders bring you their hardest problems, and you and your team bring the technical judgment – increasingly, AI-powered judgment – to help solve them well.

We're looking for someone who is genuinely excited about what AI can do – not just conceptually, but hands-on, day to day – and who wants to build and lead a team that uses it responsibly to move the firm forward.

• Driving Change – Identifying areas for enhancement and improvement and gaining organizational buy-in to implement those changes.
• Detail Oriented & Driven – Thorough and rigorous attention to all details. Ability to manage multiple high-touch projects simultaneously with precision and accuracy. Takes initiative and ownership in all aspects of role from logistics to processes and is unafraid to get their hands dirty and eager to learn.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration:
  
  Work collaboratively with others across the organization to achieve shared objectives.

Set Our Architecture Standards

• Own and publish Janney's reference architectures, technology standards, and build-vs-buy guidance, so that following the standard is simply the easiest way to get something built.
• Maintain our architecture pattern library as a living resource, retiring or updating patterns that teams aren't actually using.
• Keep our technology reference model current and accurate, so architecture decisions are based on what we actually run today, not an outdated diagram.
• Lead our move from Azure Dev Ops to the Atlassian suite (Jira and Confluence) as the new home for architecture decision records, our pattern library, and backlog management – including managing the transition itself.

Guide Technology Investment Decisions

• Own the architecture review for every request entering our technology portfolio intake process, deciding whether it follows an existing pattern, needs a documented exception, or can be met by something we already have – all within agreed service levels (5 business days for initial triage, 10 for exception review).
• Chair our exception review process and keep a clear record of those decisions so they can shape future standards.
• Represent architecture at the quarterly Portfolio Investment Council and monthly Portfolio Checkpoint, and act as the senior architecture partner to UX research, our data office, and security architecture during intake.
• Measure your own success by how often teams choose the governed path, not by how many requests you turn down. A high volume of exceptions usually means our standards need to catch up, not that teams are doing something wrong.

Lead AI & Automation as a Core Capability

• Build and lead a small, high-caliber team of forward-thinking AI engineers – spanning AI Factory & Automation, Workflow Automation, and AI Security – focused on solving real, high-priority business problems with AI.
• Set Janney's roadmap for applied AI and automation, and hold it to the same standards and rigor as any other major technology investment.
• Own our approach to AI security and responsible AI use – how we handle…