Head of Advisor Platform Engineering

ABOUT US:

Kestra Holdings offers industry-leading wealth management platforms for independent wealth management professionals nationwide. With an innovative culture that celebrates independence, the company seeks to redefine the future of the advisory industry through superior service, cutting-edge technology, and preeminent resources that every financial professional needs to succeed in the market now and in the years to come.

Kestra Holdings companies collectively oversee $123 billion in assets under administration (AUA) and support more than 2,400+ independent financial professionals across the country in delivering comprehensive securities, trust, and investment advisory services to their clients. Located in the "Silicon Hills" of Austin, Texas, Kestra Holdings offers an experience as unique as the city in which it operates.

Kestra Holdings is seeking an accomplished, strategic, and hands-on engineering executive to serve as Head of Advisor Platform Engineering. This is a high-impact leadership role accountable for the end-to-end software engineering strategy and execution of our next-generation, cloud-native advisor platform that serves thousands of financial advisors across multiple business units.

This role combines deep expertise in modern software engineering practices, platform architecture, organizational design, and delivery management. You will lead a high-performing global team, spanning onshore and offshore engineers, to build resilient, secure, and scalable digital capabilities that are tightly aligned with business objectives. You will own platform delivery from concept to production, including planning, architecture, development, QA, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.

The ideal candidate is a transformational engineering leader who thrives in complexity, drives results with clarity and accountability, and can scale teams, processes, and platforms to match a growing enterprise.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategic Engineering Leadership

• Define and own the engineering strategy, technical direction, and delivery of Kestra's advisor platform - including front-end portals, APIs, backend services, integrations, and mobile experiences.
• Translate the advisor platform product vision into a cohesive, modular architecture with reusable capabilities, and align with broader enterprise architecture goals.
• Actively participate in strategic planning with executive leadership and product partners to ensure platform investments align with business growth and experience priorities.

Modern Software Engineering Practices

• Establish best-in-class SDLC with automation across testing, security scans, code quality, CI/CD, release orchestration, and deployment pipelines.
• Champion an Agile delivery model with SCRUM, Kanbun, or SAFe frameworks, and enforce engineering velocity, code quality, and production stability KPIs.
• Embed DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices for performance, availability, observability, and incident response across the platform.

Global Team Leadership & Talent Development

• Lead, scale, and coach a global software engineering organization comprising full-time and offshore partner teams (India, LATAM, or similar geographies).
• Define org structure, roles, and responsibilities aligned with platform domains and delivery priorities.
• Build a culture of accountability, psychological safety, technical excellence, and continuous learning.
• Partner with People/HR teams to drive recruiting, onboarding, talent development, and performance management.

Architecture & Technology Governance

• Oversee platform design decisions across microservices, API gateways, event-driven patterns, data contracts, identity, and integration strategies.
• Define architectural blueprints and reference patterns to drive consistency, scalability, and resiliency.
• Actively remove legacy tech debt and create scalable alternatives to support advisor growth and platform extensibility.

Security, Risk, and Compliance

• Enforce a "secure-by-default" mindset across all engineering practices and development life cycles.
• Partner with Cybersecurity, Risk, and Compliance functions to implement secure coding practices, vulnerability management, and audit controls.
• Ensure systems are designed with data privacy, compliance, and regulatory controls as a priority (e.g., SEC, FINRA).

Cross-functional and Vendor Collaboration

• Work in lockstep with Product Management, Data Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, Enterprise Architecture, and Cybersecurity teams to deliver holistic solutions.
• Partner with vendor partners and internal sourcing teams to evaluate, onboard, and manage third-party platforms, APIs, and managed services.
• Conduct technical due diligence and lead buy-vs-build-vs-integrate evaluations for key platform components.

Financial Management & Program Execution

• Own and manage a multi-million-dollar annual engineering budget, including labor, software, infrastructure, and contingency planning.
• Maintain delivery roadmaps, capacity models, cost forecasting, and engineering resource allocation based on priority initiatives.
• Drive program execution accountability through milestone tracking, stakeholder updates, and operational reviews.

Change Management & Adoption Enablement

• Develop structured release readiness, change management, and enablement strategies for each major feature or platform release.
• Work closely with Training, Product, Marketing, and Advisor Success teams to ensure adoption and feedback loops are embedded into each initiative.
• Monitor advisor feedback, incident patterns, NPS, and usage telemetry to continuously improve user experience and platform health.

Key Qualifications

Technical and Leadership Experience:

• 12+ years in enterprise software engineering roles, with 5+ years in senior leadership engineering roles.
• Demonstrated success building and operating cloud-native platforms at scale (Azure preferred).
• Deep hands-on understanding of:- API development and management-Microservices architecture-Event streaming (Kafka or similar)-Mobile frameworks and web platforms (React/Angular)-Relational and non-relational data stores
• Experience running a modern Agile/DevSecOps engineering organization with distributed teams.
• Prior responsibility for managing offshore engineering partnerships and global delivery models.
• Experience managing platform quality with automated unit, regression, performance, security, and integration testing.

Domain Experience & Context:

• Good knowledge of financial services, wealth management, or fintech domains.
• Experience working in regulated environments and building platforms for intermediaries (e.g., advisors, brokers, or RIA networks) is highly preferred.
• Exposure to advisor-facing platforms such as CRMs, portfolio management tools, trading platforms, or financial planning software is a strong plus.

Leadership & Interpersonal Skills:

• Executive-level communicator with the ability to engage with technical teams and business leaders alike.
• Data-driven and outcome-oriented, with a strong bias towards action and accountability.
• Inspires teams through clarity, coaching, and empowerment.
• Collaborative, humble, and capable of building strong relationships across functional lines.

Nice-to-Have - Emerging Tech:

• Exposure to AI-powered developer productivity tools such as GitHub Copoilot, AWS CodeWhisperer, or similar.
• Interest in or early experimentation with integrating AI-assisted coding, intelligent documentation, or automation of developer workflows into the engineering lifecycle.

Why Join Kestra Holdings?

Kestra Holdings is a rapidly growing, innovation-focused financial services firm powering the success of independent financial advisors across the country. Our culture is rooted in collaboration, excellence, and a commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology and service.

You'll have the unique opportunity to:

• Build the next-generation advisor platform from the ground up.
• Work with a highly engaged executive team committed to digital transformation.
• Lead at scale and influence across the enterprise.
• Shape the future of financial advisor technology in a dynamic and growing market.

INTERNAL APPLICANT POLICY:

Internal applicants must be in good standing and have a minimum of 1 year of service with Kestra. Internal applicants must also have a minimum of 1 year service in current role unless approved by EVP.

BENEFITS:

Full health, vision, dental. 401(k) plans along with a host of voluntary plans such as car insurance, legal services and more.

DISCLOSURE

By applying to a job at Kestra Financial, Inc., you are agreeing to the following statements:

• You acknowledge that if hired, Kestra Financial, Inc. may, obtain and use background information concerning your credit, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, work habits, performance and experience for evaluation for your potential employment.
• It is the policy of Kestra Financial to ensure equal employment opportunity without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, identity or expression, age, disability, marital status, citizenship, national origin, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Kestra Financial prohibits any such discrimination or harassment.

KESTRA VALUES:

Our Mission is Powering Financial Independence, enabling the growth and success of investing clients and the advisors who serve them. We do that by living our values: SERVE, MAKE IT HAPPEN, and ONE TEAM.