The Self Financial Technology team is looking for a talented and driven software technology architect to join our team and make major strategic contributions to Self’s future state technology solutions and practices. We are searching for a results-oriented technology leader with a strong track record of architecting enterprise solutions at scale and working closely with software engineering teams to efficiently and predictably deliver business value through technology.

Self’s Principal Software Solutions Architect will provide technical leadership to the Self engineering organization to evolve and modernize our existing suite of technologies and solutions in order to provide best in class experiences for our customers and to scale our solutions along with a rapidly growing business.

The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience in software architecture, development of software technology strategy & roadmaps, and ability to provide effective leadership across multiple software delivery teams in a fast-paced, agile environment. Candidates must be capable of influencing across the enterprise and partnering with multiple business stakeholders, product, operations and technology leaders to drive technology vision and execution. The role requires a deep understanding of software and financial industry trends and working with teammates across Self to align our efforts with enterprise technology strategy, standards, best practices, security and regulatory requirements.

This is an Individual Contributor role but requires strong leadership through collaboration and influencing across the enterprise. This position reports directly to the Self’s Vice President of Engineering.

Why Self?

There are approximately 100 million people in the US who have low credit scores or who have no access to credit at all. Sadly, they have few options. Most banks and financial institutions don’t make any material effort to address this situation because it’s not profitable for them to do so. Poor credit or a lack of credit history can create major barriers to renting an apartment or getting certain jobs, let alone buying a car or house. Even if you can get a loan, with a low credit score you’re very likely to pay much more in interest and fees over the life of that loan.

Self Financial, Inc. is a venture-backed, financial services startup based in Austin, TX. Our mission is to address this inequity by helping millions of traditionally-underserved people build credit and save money on their journey toward financial security.

In addition to our positive mission, we also foster an open, welcoming, and fun culture, and take pride in being one of Austin’s best places to work.

Requirements

As part of this role you will:

• Assess and help document the current state of Self’s software architecture and develop a target state model with associated roadmap in order to support near term and long term business and technology objectives.
• Develop and provide clear guidance to help establish consistent patterns and practices in service design and integration, API design, data modeling & schema design, and usage of platforms and middleware technologies.
• Help establish a clear, consistent and effective software architecture practice at Self that is aligned with the company’s scale, agile culture and business & technology objectives and which creates positive value, rather than roadblocks, for engineering teams.
• Work closely with stakeholders including delivery team leads, engineering managers, product managers, SREs, and senior leadership to ensure that all participants have the necessary direction and feedback to deliver product features predictably, on-time, and with high-quality.
• Collaborate with the product team to help ensure foundational architectural work and other non-functional requirements are properly incorporated and prioritized in delivery team backlogs.
• Possess or develop deep domain expertise in Self’s financial business areas in order to understand and align technology strategy with business goals.
• Be able to communicate effectively with Self senior leadership and executives in order to drive consensus view on technology initiatives and strategy.
• Have a passion for emerging technologies and be capable of influencing and inspiring the organization in developing innovative solutions that meet business needs.
• Provider leadership and subject matter expertise in design and execution to meet both functional and non-functional requirements in alignment with overarching strategy and roadmap.
• Ensure the technical integrity and consistency of the software solutions across multiple independent delivery teams, and work with those teams to encourage shared solutions and prevent unnecessary redundancy.
• Understand/interpret solution requirements and align near-term architecture & design to the long-term target state.
• Have the ability to roll up your sleeves and work with teams to help develop proofs of concept or prototypes, ensuring that Self is making well informed and well researched decisions about technology.
• Mentor, coach and guide engineering staff.

Skills & Requirements

• At least 10 years of diverse software architecture experience in various architecture domains (business, application, data, infrastructure & security)
• Strong customer focus
• Strategic architectural mindset
• Experience developing and communicating pragmatic, actionable architecture guidance that drives concrete solutions
• Strong track record of technology leadership, architecting solutions, and influencing, with leadership qualities that engineering teams and other stakeholders recognize and respect
• Full life cycle experience in application development, deployment and operations
• Ability to work identify and drive the right solutions for the business, even in the face of ambiguity.
• Broad knowledge of modern technologies: languages, frameworks, techniques, industry trends, etc
• Familiarity with and ability to pragmatically apply cloud-ready enterprise architecture principles, frameworks and associated artifacts (e.g. Twelve-Factor, Domain Driven Design & TOGAF) to real-world technology problems
• Keen understanding of both services-oriented and event-driven distributed architectures
• Experience in building and delivering strategy presentations to senior executives
• Experience working with public-cloud-hosted architectures and deployment models (especially AWS)
• Nice to have: Deep domain experience in the financial industry or other highly-regulated industry

Benefits

Benefits and perks include:

• Stock options
• Quarterly bonuses
• Generous employer-paid health, vision and dental insurance coverage
• Flexible vacation policy
• Educational assistance
• Free Gym membership
• Casual dress code
• Team happy hours and events
• Remote work arrangements/ Flexible work schedule (due to the pandemic)

Our downtown office is open for those who want to take advantage of working onsite.

How we act with each other is how we act with our customers. We are direct, transparent and respectful, and we hope you embrace that approach.

Self Financial requires all employees hired to successfully pass a background check.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Due to COVID-19, we're working from home until further notice (stay safe!).