Head of Advisor Platform Engineering
Apply NowCompany: Appcast
Location: Austin, TX 78745
Description:
Job Title: Head of Advisor Platform Engineering
Location: Austin, TX
Reports to: Chief Digital & Technology Officer
Position Overview:
We are 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:
1. Strategic Engineering Leadership
Key Qualifications:
Technical and Leadership Experience:
Why Join our company?
We are 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:
EEO Employer
Apex Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate or allow discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, genetic information, registered domestic partner status, marital status, disability, status as a crime victim, protected veteran status, political affiliation, union membership, or any other characteristic protected by law. Apex will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable law. If you have visited our website in search of information on employment opportunities or to apply for a position, and you require an accommodation in using our website for a search or application, please contact our Employee Services Department at [email protected] or 844-463-6178.
Apex Systems is a world-class IT services company that serves thousands of clients across the globe. When you join Apex, you become part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. We offer quality career resources, training, certifications, development opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits package. Our commitment to excellence is reflected in many awards, including ClearlyRated's Best of Staffing in Talent Satisfaction in the United States and Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom and Mexico.
Apex Benefits Overview: Apex offers a range of supplemental benefits, including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and other insurance plans that offer an optional layer of financial protection. We offer an ESPP (employee stock purchase program) and a 401K program which allows you to contribute typically within 30 days of starting, with a company match after 12 months of tenure. Apex also offers a HSA (Health Savings Account on the HDHP plan), a SupportLinc Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with up to 8 free counseling sessions, a corporate discount savings program and other discounts. In terms of professional development, Apex hosts an on-demand training program, provides access to certification prep and a library of technical and leadership courses/books/seminars once you have 6+ months of tenure, and certification discounts and other perks to associations that include CompTIA and IIBA. Apex has a dedicated customer service team for our Consultants that can address questions around benefits and other resources, as well as a certified Career Coach. You can access a full list of our benefits, programs, support teams and resources within our 'Welcome Packet' as well, which an Apex team member can provide.
Location: Austin, TX
Reports to: Chief Digital & Technology Officer
Position Overview:
We are 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:
1. Strategic Engineering Leadership
- Define and own the engineering strategy, technical direction, and delivery of our 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.
- 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, Kanban, 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Executive-level communicator with the ability to engage with technical teams and business leaders alike.
- Data-driven and outcome-oriented, with a strong bias toward action and accountability.
- Inspires teams through clarity, coaching, and empowerment.
- Collaborative, humble, and capable of building strong relationships across functional lines.
- Exposure to AI-powered developer productivity tools such as GitHub Copilot, 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 our company?
We are 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.
- et.
EEO Employer
Apex Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate or allow discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related medical conditions), age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, genetic information, registered domestic partner status, marital status, disability, status as a crime victim, protected veteran status, political affiliation, union membership, or any other characteristic protected by law. Apex will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable law. If you have visited our website in search of information on employment opportunities or to apply for a position, and you require an accommodation in using our website for a search or application, please contact our Employee Services Department at [email protected] or 844-463-6178.
Apex Systems is a world-class IT services company that serves thousands of clients across the globe. When you join Apex, you become part of a team that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. We offer quality career resources, training, certifications, development opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits package. Our commitment to excellence is reflected in many awards, including ClearlyRated's Best of Staffing in Talent Satisfaction in the United States and Great Place to Work in the United Kingdom and Mexico.
Apex Benefits Overview: Apex offers a range of supplemental benefits, including medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and other insurance plans that offer an optional layer of financial protection. We offer an ESPP (employee stock purchase program) and a 401K program which allows you to contribute typically within 30 days of starting, with a company match after 12 months of tenure. Apex also offers a HSA (Health Savings Account on the HDHP plan), a SupportLinc Employee Assistance Program (EAP) with up to 8 free counseling sessions, a corporate discount savings program and other discounts. In terms of professional development, Apex hosts an on-demand training program, provides access to certification prep and a library of technical and leadership courses/books/seminars once you have 6+ months of tenure, and certification discounts and other perks to associations that include CompTIA and IIBA. Apex has a dedicated customer service team for our Consultants that can address questions around benefits and other resources, as well as a certified Career Coach. You can access a full list of our benefits, programs, support teams and resources within our 'Welcome Packet' as well, which an Apex team member can provide.