Data & Analytics Staff Architect

Why USAA?

At USAA, we have an important mission: facilitating the financial security of millions of U.S. military members and their families. Not all of our employees served in our nation’s military, but we all share in the mission to give back to those who did. We’re working as one to build a great experience and make a real impact for our members.
We believe in our core values of honesty, integrity, loyalty and service. They’re what guides everything we do – from how we treat our members to how we treat each other. Come be a part of what makes us so special!

The Opportunity

USAA is seeking a highly skilled and experienced individual to join our Data and Analytics Architecture team as Technical Architect, Staff. In this role you will play a crucial role in shaping the strategic direction of the Advanced Analytics Domain. This position requires a visionary leader with experience in AI/ML, GenAI and related fields. This person will collaborate with architecture peers and business stakeholders to drive innovation, align Domain’s goals with overall business objectives, and ensure successful implementation of advanced analytics initiatives. This person will play a critical role in establishing architectural standards, patterns, and practices for this Domain. This person will provide technical leadership and guidance to the IT Engineering team(s), ensuring implementation of the recommended architecture.

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. 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:

• Bachelor’s 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:

• Demonstrated experience working in data analytics, data science, AI/ML, and cloud platforms as an architect or lead role.
• Working knowledge of GenAI.
• In-depth knowledge of industry best practices and emerging trends in the field of advanced analytics.
• Knowledge of various data architecture patterns including OLTP, data warehousing, and distributed data systems.
• Strong hands-on experience on RDBMS and NoSQL technologies.
• Knowledge of cloud data solutions offerings.
• Knowledge of data governance, data quality, and data security.
• Must demonstrate working knowledge of Snowflake (e.g. building applications/models leveraging Snowflake as the underlying database, setting a cloud data warehousing strategy using Snowflake).
• Understanding of data resiliency patterns across geographic locations.
• Strong leadership and communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audience.

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.

What we offer:

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. The salary range for this position is: $138,230.00 - $264,200.00.

Employees may be eligible for pay incentives based on overall corporate and individual performance and at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors.

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, please 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.