WEX · 4 hours ago
Sr. Director, Architecture & Research
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
10+ years expWEX Health is seeking a Senior Director of Architecture & Research to define and lead the architectural vision and cloud strategy for their Health & Benefits technology ecosystem. This role involves overseeing mission-critical SaaS platforms and ensuring architectural decisions align with business strategy and regulatory needs.
Financial ServicesFinTechPaymentsSoftware
Responsibilities
Own the end-to-end architectural vision across application platforms, APIs, data, integrations, cloud infrastructure, and developer tooling
Define platform-first and cloud-native architecture principles that promote reuse, composability, security, and delivery velocity
Establish reference architectures, standards, and guardrails that scale across hundreds of teams without creating friction
Ensure architecture decisions align tightly with business strategy, regulatory needs, and long-term growth
Define and own the Azure cloud architecture strategy, including:
Multi-region design
Network and identity architecture
Data residency and compliance considerations
Cost governance and FinOps alignment
Lead the evolution toward cloud-native and platform-engineered solutions, leveraging Azure services (e.g., PaaS, containers, managed databases) where appropriate
Ensure cloud architectures support resilience, scalability, security, and rapid innovation
Partner with Infrastructure and Cloud Operations teams to continuously improve cloud maturity and operational efficiency
Champion DevOps as an operating model, not just tooling
Drive adoption of CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, and policy-as-code across the engineering organization
Define architectural standards for deployment automation, environment consistency, and release safety
Promote platform engineering practices that reduce cognitive load on product teams, enabling them to focus on customer value rather than infrastructure complexity
Ensure development teams leverage modern productivity tools (including AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Bolt, and Augment) in a secure and governed manner
Lead the transition to multi-region Active-Active architectures designed for zero downtime and continuous operation
Architect self-healing systems with automated failover, elastic scaling, and intelligent recovery
Ensure platforms withstand extreme demand patterns, such as open enrollment surges and high-volume financial transactions
Partner with SRE and Operations teams to define SLOs, SLIs, observability standards, and incident management practices
Drive a culture of operational excellence and reliability engineering
Elevate user experience as a core architectural responsibility, recognizing that UX quality is inseparable from system design
Ensure backend and platform architectures enable:
Low-latency, responsive user interfaces
Real-time feedback and personalization
Consistent experiences across products and channels
Partner with Product and Design leaders to align architectural decisions with customer trust, accessibility, and ease of use
Advocate for architectures that reduce friction for both end users and internal operators
Own the API platform and developer experience (DX) strategy, treating developers—internal and external—as primary customers
Define standards for API design, governance, versioning, and lifecycle management
Lead the evolution of a Developer Center that includes:
Clear documentation and onboarding
SDKs, samples, and tooling
Sandbox and test environments
Reliability and performance guarantees
Enable faster, safer partner integrations and ecosystem expansion
Define architectural patterns for integrations with external systems, including employers, carriers, payroll providers, banks, payment processors, and government agencies
Promote event-driven and API-based integration models that are resilient, observable, and scalable
Ensure integration architectures handle partner variability while preserving data integrity, security, and performance
Establish standards for contract testing, backward compatibility, and failure isolation
Lead the architectural vision for enterprise data platforms, supporting operational, analytical, and real-time use cases
Ensure data architecture enables:
Regulatory reporting and auditability
Advanced analytics and insights
AI/ML training, inference, and monitoring
Guide the evolution of platforms leveraging SQL Server, Snowflake, MongoDB, and modern data pipelines
Establish strong data governance, lineage, quality, and access controls
Promote a data-as-a-product mindset across the organization
Define and execute the AI platform strategy, moving from isolated experiments to scalable, governed AI capabilities
Champion AI-native and agentic AI architectures, enabling autonomous systems that:
Orchestrate complex benefits workflows
Make context-aware decisions within defined guardrails
Collaborate effectively with humans
Establish architectural standards for model lifecycle management, orchestration, monitoring, and explainability
Ensure AI systems comply with privacy, security, and regulatory requirements while delivering measurable business outcomes
Embed security-by-design and privacy-by-design principles across all platforms
Ensure architectures comply with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2 Type II, and evolving regulations
Define AI governance frameworks addressing ethical use, auditability, and data protection
Partner with Security, Legal, and Risk teams to proactively address threats and regulatory change
Lead, mentor, and develop senior architects, platform leaders, and principal engineers
Build a culture where architecture, cloud, and DevOps enable speed and quality, not bureaucracy
Set clear expectations for technical excellence, documentation, and decision-making
Inspire teams through strong communication, technical credibility, and clear vision
Act as a trusted technical advisor to Product, Engineering, Operations, and Executive leadership
Translate architecture, cloud, and DevOps decisions into business impact (growth, cost, risk, customer experience)
Influence investment priorities and long-term platform evolution
Represent technology strategy confidently in executive and board-adjacent discussions
Serve as a visible industry leader in architecture, cloud, DevOps, AI, and health technology
Represent the company in peer-level discussions with customers, partners, and vendors
Contribute to conferences, panels, publications, and industry forums
Monitor emerging trends that could reshape the competitive landscape
Qualification
Required
10+ years of experience in software engineering and architecture, including 5+ years leading architecture, platform, or senior engineering functions in large-scale technology organizations
Proven ability to influence architectural direction across hundreds of engineers without relying on direct reporting lines
Deep experience designing and operating cloud-native platforms on Microsoft Azure, including multi-region architectures, identity and network design, data residency, and cost governance
Strong understanding of how cloud architecture choices impact reliability, scalability, security, and developer velocity
Demonstrated success architecting highly available, resilient, and scalable distributed systems, including Active-Active designs, automated failover, and systems that support extreme load variability
Strong background in DevOps as an operating model, including CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, and deployment safety
Experience enabling platform engineering practices that abstract infrastructure complexity and improve developer productivity
Solid architectural experience designing and evolving enterprise data platforms, including transactional and operational data stores, analytical and reporting platforms, data pipelines, governance, and data quality practices
Ability to design data architectures that support regulatory reporting, analytics, and AI workloads
Proven experience defining API-first architectures and integration strategies that support internal teams, external partners, and third-party ecosystems
Strong understanding of API design, versioning, governance, and integration patterns
Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Product and Design leaders to ensure architecture enables great user experiences
Understanding of how latency, data models, workflow design, and platform constraints directly impact usability, accessibility, and customer trust
Experience architecting systems in highly regulated environments, with working knowledge of HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2 Type II, and secure-by-design principles
Ability to embed security, privacy, and compliance into architectural decisions from the start
Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to executive, business, and technical audiences
Proven track record of influencing senior leaders and aligning diverse stakeholders around a shared technical vision
Preferred
Experience leading or architecting AI platforms and/or agentic AI systems, including AI-native architectures, model orchestration, governance, and human-in-the-loop controls
Familiarity with modern LLM ecosystems and applied AI in complex, regulated domains
Background leading research, innovation, or advanced engineering teams, with demonstrated ability to move from experimentation to production-scale impact
Prior experience in Health & Benefits, Insurance, or Financial Services environments, particularly those involving complex rules, payments, and regulatory oversight
Experience improving developer experience through strong APIs, documentation, tooling, and internal developer platforms or portals
Evidence of technical thought leadership such as conference speaking, publications, open-source contributions, or patents
Experience leading cloud, DevOps, or platform transformations in large, distributed organizations
Benefits
Health, dental and vision insurances
Retirement savings plan
Paid time off
Health savings account
Flexible spending accounts
Life insurance
Disability insurance
Tuition reimbursement
And more
Company
WEX
Wex is a financial technology service provider for fleet, travel and healthcare industries.
5001-10000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
WEX has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (22)
2024 (10)
2023 (12)
2022 (20)
2021 (14)
2020 (18)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$900MKey Investors
Warburg Pincus
2025-02-25Post Ipo Debt· $500M
2020-06-30Post Ipo Equity· $90M
2020-06-30Post Ipo Debt· $310M
Leadership Team
Melissa Smith
Chair and Chief Executive Officer
Sachin Dhawan
Chief Technology Officer
Recent News
Morningstar.com
2026-01-22
2026-01-20
2026-01-20
Company data provided by crunchbase