Distinguished Engineer

Distinguished Engineer

We are seeking a distinguished engineer to serve as a cross-organizational force multiplier, working under the guidance of the chief architect to drive transformational technology outcomes across the enterprise. This is the senior-most individual contributor role reserved for a proven technology leader capable of solving complex problems at scale, deeply influencing technical direction, and aligning engineering execution with enterprise risk, regulatory compliance, and business value creation. This role will operate with a unique remit engaging and accelerating outcomes in each of the following organizations: Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Office, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Office, First Line Head of Risk and Controls, Head of Solutions Delivery, Enterprise Architecture. This role will be critical in shaping the bank's future-state architecture, championing a secure-by-design philosophy, and acting as a bridge between technical innovation and risk-mitigated execution. This role is a mission-critical opportunity to lead with influence, precision, and innovation at the intersection of architecture, risk, and execution.

Job Responsibilities:

• Architectural Leadership: Lead complex enterprise-wide architecture design and validation for strategic platforms.
• Risk-Driven Engineering: Identify and remediate architectural risk vectors in collaboration with InfoSec, Risk, and Control partners.
• Cross-Domain Influence: Serve as a trusted advisor and partner across the CTO, CISO, Risk, Delivery, and Architecture teams.
• Acceleration & Evangelism: Identify architectural bottlenecks and design accelerators.
• Service Delivery Enablement: Partner with Service Delivery leadership to embed engineering standards and observability patterns.
• Governance & Strategy: Represent architecture in key forums, working groups, and design review boards.

Additional Accountabilities:

• Uses independent judgement and discretion to make decisions.
• Analyzes and resolves problems.
• Performs special projects, and additional duties and responsibilities as required.
• Consistently adheres to regulatory and compliance policies and standards linked to the job as listed and complete required compliance trainings.

Job Requirements:

• Required Qualifications:
• Education level required: Undergraduate Degree (4 years or equivalent) Computer Science or Engineering.
• Minimum experience required: 15+ years of deep, hands-on engineering experience across multiple technical domains.
• Proven leadership as a Distinguished Engineer, Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, or Fellow in a Fortune 500 or large-scale financial institution.
• Extensive experience with regulatory frameworks and the ability to design systems and architectures that comply from day one.
• Previous experience being a change agent in collaborating with regulatory agencies.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and partner with senior executives across technology, security, risk, and operations.
• Expertise in threat modeling, architectural risk analysis, and translating control frameworks into actionable engineering guidance.
• Track record of shipping resilient, secure systems that operate at scale with minimal manual intervention.
• Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience in a bank or regulated financial services environment with >$100B in assets.
• Contributions to open-source projects, technical patents, or published whitepapers on enterprise-scale architecture, cybersecurity, or resiliency engineering.
• Expert level coding ability in modern programming languages.
• Expert level abilities within cloud service providers.
• Strong presentation and storytelling ability.
• Familiarity with frameworks such as NIST, MITRE ATT&CK, COBIT, TOGAF, and SABSA.
• Job Competencies:
• A 10x technologist, equally comfortable writing reference code, crafting architecture strategy, or influencing enterprise policy.
• Thrive in high-stakes, ambiguous environments, with a focus on risk-aware innovation.
• Sees engineering through the lens of business impact, aligning technology with regulatory, operational, and client objectives.
• Expert analytic skills to evaluate access entitlements across systems and applications.
• Expert knowledge and understanding of securing all major operating systems.
• Expert knowledge in enterprise logging and monitoring solutions.
• Ability to facilitate communications to business stakeholders and interact effectively with all levels of management.
• Expert in communicating and/or presenting to executives and board members.
• 50% travel required.
• Physical demands (ADA): No unusual physical exertion is involved.

Flagstar is an Equal Opportunity Employer