Research Platform Architect

Research Platform Architect

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is seeking a Research Platform Architect to lead the technical vision and long‑term architecture of its global economic research platforms such as FRED and FRASER. These platforms provide access to hundreds of thousands of economic time‑series datasets, historical archives, and research publications used by millions of economists, policymakers, researchers, students, and developers worldwide. This role will define the strategic direction of technologies for the Research platform and ensure standards, processes and target state architectures are guided throughout the organization.

As the Research Platform Architect, you will shape the future architecture of this ecosystem – ensuring the platforms remain scalable, reliable, and innovative as global demand for economic data continues to grow.

• Define the long‑term architectural strategy for the economic research platform ecosystem.
• Align architecture with evolving research needs, data growth, and public data access.
• Provide technical leadership across the Research Domain Architect and Application Architect roles.
• Establish architecture principles, design standards, and governance practices across engineering teams.
• Lead architecture reviews for major technology initiatives.
• Lead architecture for high‑availability public APIs and data services used globally by developers and institutions.
• Collaborate with data architecture to support large‑scale time‑series datasets and historical revisions.
• Design systems capable of handling traffic spikes during major economic events and releases.
• Partner with engineering leaders and product teams to translate research needs into scalable platform architecture.
• Mentor engineers on modern platform architecture practices.

10+ years of experience in enterprise / platform architecture, solution design and large‑scale technology implementations in complex, highly regulated environments.

Deep understanding of modern technology stacks, cloud platforms (AWS preferred), and enterprise software solutions.

Demonstrated experience designing, architecting and supporting external / public‑facing applications with a strong emphasis on scalability, security, availability and performance for external customer‑facing platforms.

Demonstrated knowledge of and leading adoption of industry best practices in the areas of application development, solution architecture, agile methodologies, cloud development, cybersecurity and cloud data architecture.

Industry‑related certifications in one or more of the above areas are desired.

Outstanding communication and collaboration skills, including translating technical topics and risks into business teams.

Ability to personalize communication to audience from technologists to executive leadership.

Extensive, in‑depth experience implementing highly complex technology projects in a cross‑functional matrix environment with demonstrated ability to drive consensus and deliver results.

Examples of leading through influence and successfully resolving conflicting priorities are required.

Deep alignment into the Research business domain which is required to translate business strategy into technical strategy, architecture, value streams and operational needs into a scalable platform that accelerates delivery, maximizes ROI and ensures long‑term relevance of solutions.

Demonstrated ability to define long‑term architecture roadmaps and lead complex modernization initiatives.

Strong experience with API‑driven systems and high‑traffic public platforms.

Minimum 5 years of experience designing and operating systems on AWS or similar cloud platforms such as Azure.

Experience working with modern technology stacks including PHP, Go, Angular, Terraform and Postgre

SQL.

Experience architecting large public data platforms or analytics platforms.

Experience with time‑series data systems or analytical datasets.

Experience modernizing legacy systems toward service‑oriented or modular architectures.

Experience designing developer ecosystems and public API platforms.

Familiarity with distributed data processing systems and data pipelines.

• Salary: $140-170k
• Generous paid time off
• Tuition & Training assistance/reimbursement
• 401(k) match & Annuity/Pension fund
• Top‑notch health care benefits
• Child and family care leave
• Professional development opportunities

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is an Equal Opportunity Employer.