Distinguished Architect, Trading Platforms and Technology

About this role

Lead with Purpose, Unlock Your Team's Passion LPL Financial is the nation's largest independent broker-dealer and a Fortune 500 fintech leader, supporting more than $1.2 trillion in assets through a modern technology platform that powers over 22,000 advisors. Technology is not just a support function at LPL — it is a primary growth engine.

As a Distinguished Architect for Trading & Investment Management Technology, you will operate at the intersection of business strategy, product innovation, and enterprise architecture — shaping the future of LPL's trading platforms across Broker Dealer, Advisory, and Models capabilities. This is a rare opportunity to define and drive architecture at enterprise scale while remaining deeply hands-on in crafting modern, cloud-native, API-first solutions that directly impact advisors and their clients across retail, self-directed, and private wealth trading — including emerging capabilities in blockchain-based assets and tokenized securities.

Job Overview

This role serves as a senior individual-contributor architecture leader within Trading & Investment Management Technology. The Distinguished Architect partners directly with the EVP/CIO and executive leadership to define target-state architecture across LPL's trading platforms while contributing to the broader enterprise architecture strategy.

The role blends strategic influence with deep technical engagement — guiding domain architects, shaping architectural standards, and ensuring business strategy, regulatory considerations, and trading industry best practices are translated into scalable, secure, and high-performance technology solutions.

Year One Expectations

• Immerse yourself in LPL's business vision and strategy; develop a deep understanding of the trading and investment management domain, including internal and external actors, end-to-end dependencies, and regulatory landscape. • Partner with business and technology stakeholders to construct a Blueprint that articulates a 3-year, business-and-technology-aligned target-state and roadmap for trading platforms spanning Broker Dealer, Advisory, and Models. • Contribute broadly to LPL's solution architecture work and platform foundations — including API definition, framework and reusable asset identification — and identify synergies in business requirements that enable efficiency, enterprise reuse, and enhanced outcomes for advisors and clients. • Contribute to and evangelize the company's architecture strategy, principles, and processes across the enterprise. • Develop relationships with business and technology leadership and teams; establish feedback loops that enable continuous improvement for both the individual and the organization.

Key Responsibilities

The Distinguished Architect will be a highly technical, forward-looking, and innovative leader with a solid foundation in software engineering and deep expertise in trading technology. Key responsibilities include:

Architecture Leadership • Define and steward target-state architecture for mission-critical trading platforms, including Broker Dealer, Advisory, and Models capabilities, along with all upstream and downstream dependencies. • Partner with business, product, and technology leaders to align architectural strategy with enterprise priorities and funding decisions. • Guide and influence domain-aligned solution and data architects to maintain architectural coherence and quality across the trading domain. • Lead the effective application of enterprise architecture principles through a deep understanding of the architecture discipline, processes, concepts, and best practices.

Standards, Frameworks & Innovation • Establish and evolve architectural standards, principles, reusable assets, and frameworks that drive scalability, availability, security, performance, and quality across the enterprise. • Research, develop, and implement innovative solutions across the architecture to enable strategic objectives; serve as an expert for enterprise architecture tools, technology, and standards. • Monitor and apply emerging technologies — including AI/ML for predictive analytics, intelligent order routing, and anomaly detection; blockchain and distributed ledger technology for tokenized securities and on-chain settlement; and modern event-driven data platforms — to transform trading operations and advisor experiences. • Drive the adoption of AI-powered capabilities across trading workflows, including algorithmic trading assistance, real-time risk monitoring, portfolio rebalancing optimization, and natural language interfaces for advisors and clients. • Identify opportunities for enterprise reuse, efficiency, and improved business outcomes through architectural alignment and shared platform foundations.

Modernization & Strategy • Lead modernization initiatives including cloud adoption on AWS, API-first transformation, and migration from legacy monolithic trading systems to microservices and event-driven architectures. • Define architectural blueprints and best practices for mission-critical trading portfolios; lead continuous evolution of the supporting technology platform, including strategic technology decisions and integration strategies. • Champion Architecture as Code (AaC) practices — defining, versioning, and governing architecture models as code artifacts integrated into CI/CD pipelines — to enable automated compliance checks, drift detection, and living documentation across the trading technology estate. • Contribute to and drive common architectural standards across the enterprise that emphasize scalability, availability, security, performance, and quality.

Stakeholder Engagement • Interface with key business and IT leaders to understand priorities and deliver modern product architecture strategies and solutions that enable the company's vision and growth. • Proactively engage executive leadership to influence funding, priorities, and architecture change while engaging deep in the tech

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