Technical Architect Staff - Messaging - Lead cutting-edge architecture design (PLANO)

Why USAA? At USAA, our mission is to empower our members to achieve financial security through highly competitive products, exceptional service and trusted advice. We seek to be the 1 choice for the military community and their families. Embrace a fulfilling career at USAA, where our core values honesty, integrity, loyalty and service define how we treat each other and our members. Be part of what truly makes us special and impactful. The Opportunity We are seeking a highly skilled and visionary Messaging Architect to lead the design and evolution of our enterprise messaging and event-driven architecture. This role will define patterns and standards for secure, resilient, and scalable message delivery across distributed systems and hybrid cloud environments. The Messaging Architect will collaborate with business and technology stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into robust messaging solutions, ensuring observability, compliance, and end-to-end reliability. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in asynchronous communication, event-driven frameworks, API design, AI enabled architectures, and cloud based platforms, combined with a strong understanding of security, encryption, and compliance best practices. This individual will champion architectural patterns, establish governance frameworks, and stay ahead of emerging trends such as AI-driven messaging, real-time analytics, and conversational platforms, driving innovation and business value across the enterprise. We offer a flexible work environment that requires an individual to be in the office 4 days per week. This position can be based in one of the following locations : San Antonio, TX, Plano, TX, Phoenix, AZ, Charlotte, NC. Relocation assistance is not available for this position. What you'll do : Collaborates with business and IT stakeholders to understand strategy, requirements, measures, risks and controls for a business function or IT domain. Utilizes expertise and research to create technology decisions with relevant architecture artifacts and proactively apply architecture thinking to conceive evolutionary strategies and roadmaps that can accelerate current capabilities for a business function or technology domain. Cultivates productive and trusted relationships with business and IT stakeholders, as well as engineering resources, to provide leadership and guidance to influence and shape priority, cost transparency and execution of architecture solutions and domain direction. Assess domain applications in collaboration with business and application owners to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and risks. Advise business owners of proposed courses of action. Defines and documents architecture standards for a technology domain to ensure architectural compliance of technology solutions. Use risk assessment methodologies to draft / evaluate and approve / reject waivers to architecture standards. Participates in activities that support the USAA technology ecosystem such as workstream planning, solution design reviews, code reviews, test case definition, and assistance in troubleshooting of Availability Command Center incidents to resolve complex production issues related to a technology domain. Provides professional and technical mentorship for new architects, engineers and IT community colleagues in an open, respectful, flexible and empathetic manner. Seeks out mentoring opportunities specifically to create team redundancy and backfill ability. Executes architecture practices and processes by properly creating and maintaining architecture domain documentation, ensuring timely completion of deliverables and suggesting enhancements. Establishes external relationships with contacts on industry organizations and government boards and vendors in the marketplace related to a business function or technology domain. Establishes a plan to gain external eminence by pursuing professional and industry technical certifications, presenting at conferences, publishing technical papers, contributing to open source, authoring patents, etc Ensures risks associated with business activities are effectively identified, measured, monitored, and controlled in accordance with risk and compliance policies and procedures. What you have : Bachelors Degree; OR 4 years of related experience (in addition to the minimum years of experience required) may be substituted in lieu of degree. 10 years of experience in the Information Technology field to include at least 2 years in a technical leadership role within IT. Experience in technology application development and / or infrastructure and operational implementation. Deep knowledge in a minimum of one technology domain (from an application, infrastructure, operations, scalability, availability, performance, people, process, and tooling perspective). Demonstrated experience in explaining complex technology decisions to both technical and nontechnical audiences at all levels in the organization. Demonstrated experience effectively communicating and developing high trust relationships with frontline and second level management and stakeholders. Understanding and application of technical architecture standards, principles, and policies and knowledge of applicable regulations and risk management practices. What sets you apart : Proven ability to translate business needs into comprehensive messaging architecture strategies, encompassing outbound communications (SMS, email, print) across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This includes defining architectural patterns, best practices, and compliance frameworks for systems Deep expertise in designing and implementing loosely coupled, resilient, and secure distributed systems utilizing event-driven architectures, with a strong preference for Kafka and familiarity with patterns like CQRS. Cloud & Infrastructure Design : Extensive experience designing, implementing, and managing resilient and secure cloud solutions across private, hybrid, and public cloud environments. This includes a solid understanding of cloud networking fundamentals (VNet / VPC design, load balancing, failover strategies, multi-region designs) to collaborate effectively with network teams. Demonstrated success in delivering Java-based solutions and a strong track record of integrating with diverse third-party systems and SaaS platforms. Proficiency in designing robust, scalable, and secure APIs, with a deep understanding of security principles, identity management, encryption, and compliance best practices for message delivery. Expertise in establishing comprehensive observability for distributed systems, including end-to-end message tracking, detailed logging, proactive alerting, and incident response to ensure high reliability and availability of messaging infrastructure. A forward-thinking mindset with the ability to stay ahead of industry trends, including AI-driven messaging, real-time analytics, and conversational platforms, and to strategically incorporate them into the architecture. Experience driving architectural standards and mentoring engineering teams to foster a culture of innovation and reliability. Compensation range : The salary range for this position is : $143,320.00 - $273,930.00 . USAA does not provide visa sponsorship for this role. Please do not apply for this role if at any time (now or in the future) you will need immigration support (i.e., H-1B, TN, STEM OPT Training Plans, etc.). Compensation : USAA has an effective process for assessing market data and establishing ranges to ensure we remain competitive. You are paid within the salary range based on your experience and market data of the position. The actual salary for this role may vary by location. Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors. The above description reflects the details considered necessary to describe the principal functions of the job and should not be construed as a detailed description of all the work requirements that may be performed in the job. Benefits : At USAA our employees enjoy best-in-class benefits to support their physical, financial, and emotional wellness. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, 401(k), pension, life insurance, parental benefits, adoption assistance, paid time off program with paid holidays plus 16 paid volunteer hours, and various wellness programs. Additionally, our career path planning and continuing education assists employees with their professional goals. For more details on our outstanding benefits, visit our benefits page on USAAjobs.com. Applications for this position are accepted on an ongoing basis, this posting will remain open until the position is filled. Thus, interested candidates are encouraged to apply the same day they view this posting. USAA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.