Morgan Stanley—Technology Management - Executive Director - WMT

Job description

Description: ABOUT MORGAN STANLEY Morgan Stanley is a leading global financial services firm providing a wide range of investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. With offices in more than 41 countries, the Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions, and individuals. For further information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com. Role Purpose: The Executive Director will be a senior architecture leader within Wealth Management Technology, accountable for shaping target-state architecture, strengthening engineering governance and converting strategic priorities into executable multi-year roadmaps. The role will partner with technology, business, risk and engineering leaders across product areas to deliver secure, resilient, scalable and cloud-aligned platforms. Leadership Mandate: Own architecture outcomes across multiple portfolios and provide clear direction to architects, engineering leads and agile squads. Partner with senior stakeholders to align business strategy, product priorities, regulatory obligations and engineering investment. Influence enterprise-wide decisions through evidence-based recommendations, trade-off analysis and concise executive communication. Build a strong architecture community by developing talent, raising standards and encouraging reusable patterns and disciplined innovation. Key Responsibilities: Define and maintain target-state architectures, transition states and measurable multi-year modernization roadmaps. Lead architecture governance, including design reviews, exception management, technical risk identification and remediation oversight. Drive cloud, digital and platform adoption using secure-by-design, resilient and observable engineering principles. Establish and promote reference architectures, white papers, technology standards, reusable patterns and architecture-as-code practices. Guide teams through complex cross-domain decisions spanning security, entitlements, data, integration, infrastructure and operational resilience. Sponsor proofs of concept when needed to validate strategic options, accelerate adoption and de-risk major investments. Partner with control functions to ensure architecture decisions meet firm standards and relevant regulatory expectations. Provide executive-level visibility on architectural health, strategic dependencies, delivery risks and investment choices. Advocate simplification, reuse and decommissioning to reduce complexity, improve reliability and strengthen long-term maintainability. Represent the Architecture & Governance function in senior forums and build productive relationships across global teams. What you will do in this role: Clear alignment between business strategy, target architecture and funded delivery roadmaps. Consistent adoption of approved patterns and reduced recurrence of avoidable architecture exceptions. Measurable improvement in platform resilience, security, scalability, engineering velocity and operational readiness. Stronger architecture capability, succession depth and collaboration across product and engineering teams. Required Experience and Capabilities 15+ years of progressive technology experience, including significant architecture and engineering leadership in large-scale enterprise environments. Demonstrated success influencing senior leaders and leading architecture across multiple teams, platforms or business capabilities. Deep knowledge of distributed systems, microservices, event-driven architecture, APIs, data architecture, security and identity/entitlements. Strong cloud architecture experience, preferably Microsoft Azure, including migration patterns, platform services, security and cost considerations. Hands-on engineering foundation in Java, .NET or comparable enterprise technologies, with the credibility to challenge designs constructively. Experience with DevOps, CI/CD, automated controls, observability, reliability engineering and modern software delivery practices. Ability to translate ambiguity into a practical architecture strategy, decision framework and sequenced roadmap. Excellent executive communication, stakeholder management, organization and planning skills. Preferred Experience: Architecture leadership within banking, wealth management, lending, payments or another highly regulated financial-services domain. Experience governing complex modernization, cloud migration or platform transformation programs at scale. Familiarity with Azure DevOps, Jenkins or TeamCity and architecture modelling such as C4. Experience building architecture communities of practice and mentoring senior technologists. Relevant cloud or architecture certifications are advantageous. Leadership Attributes: Strategic and enterprise-minded, with strong judgment and a clear bias toward outcomes. Credible, collaborative and able to persuade without relying on authority. Comfortable balancing innovation with security, resilience, control and delivery practicality. Inclusive people leader who develops others, creates accountability and builds trusted partnerships. Calm and decisive in complex situations, with high standards of integrity and execution. Position Summary: This role is suited to an accomplished architecture leader who can operate at executive level while remaining close enough to technology to shape consequential design decisions. The successful candidate will combine strategic vision, engineering depth, governance discipline and people leadership to advance the Architecture & Governance agenda across Wealth Management Technology. WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM MORGAN STANLEY: At Morgan Stanley, we raise, manage and allocate capital for our clients – helping them reach their goals. We do it in a way that’s differentiated – and we’ve done that for 90 years. Our values - putting clients first, doing the right thing, leading with exceptional ideas, committing to diversity and inclusion, and giving back - aren’t just beliefs, they guide the decisions we make every day to do what's best for our clients, communities and more than 80,000 employees in 1,200 offices across 42 countries. At Morgan Stanley, you’ll find an opportunity to work alongside the best and the brightest, in an environment where you are supported and empowered. Our teams are relentless collaborators and creative thinkers, fueled by their diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are proud to support our employees and their families at every point along their work-life journey, offering some of the most attractive and comprehensive employee benefits and perks in the industry. There’s also ample opportunity to move about the business for those who show passion and grit in their work. To learn more about our offices across the globe, please copy and paste https://www.morganstanley.com/about-us/global-offices​ into your browser. Morgan Stanley is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workforce that is diverse in experience and background. Our recruiting efforts reflect our strong commitment to a culture of inclusion, where individuals are hired, developed, and advanced based on their skills and talents. Our workforce reflects a broad cross-section of the global communities in which we operate, bringing a variety of backgrounds, talents, perspectives, and experiences. For more information, please visit: https://www.morganstanley.com/people-opportunities/eeo.