Software engineering Director 3 (Core Banking Platforms)

The Head of Core Banking Platforms – Hogan & Zafin is responsible for the strategy, delivery, and operational excellence of the bank’s core Hogan deposit platform and Zafin product/pricing platform. These systems form the backbone of the bank’s deposit, product, pricing, and customer account ecosystem, supporting millions of accounts and high-volume transactions 24/7. The role demands enterprise-scale leadership, ensuring always-on platform performance and data integrity, while spearheading large-scale modernization and transformation initiatives (such as API enablement, event-driven architecture, and mainframe optimization). This leader will drive a strong risk and control discipline and talent development agenda, engaging across business and technology to shape the future of core banking platforms. 

Responsibilities: 

• Platform Strategy & Ownership: Provide end-to-end strategic leadership and accountability for the Hogan core banking and Zafin pricing platforms, covering deposit processing, customer master data, rates, fees, billing, and rewards. 

• Operational Resilience: Ensure 24x7 platform stability, resiliency, security, and data integrity across real-time, batch, and event-driven processing environments. Oversee rigorous incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement to meet or exceed SLA and uptime targets. 

• Modernization & Innovation: Drive core platform modernization efforts (e.g., API enablement, event streaming integration, mainframe optimization) to improve agility and scalability while maintaining seamless service for customers. 

• Leadership & Team Development: Lead, mentor, and transform a global engineering organization (~150–200 engineers and partner resources), fostering a high-performance culture of accountability, inclusion, and engineering excellence. 

• Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Engagement: Partner closely with Product, Operations, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and Audit teams to align platform capabilities with business goals. Ensure strong risk management and regulatory compliance, and serve as a key escalation point during high-impact platform issues. 

• Vendor & Financial Management: Manage third-party vendor relationships (e.g., core system providers), negotiate contracts and commercial outcomes, and oversee budget and resource allocation, balancing “run” operations with strategic “change” investments. 

• Executive Communication: Regularly report on platform health, performance, and risk to senior leadership and governance forums. Articulate technology strategy, key risks, and mitigation plans in clear business terms for executive and board-level audiences. 

Basic Skills 

- Bachelor's degree, or equivalent work experience  
- 12 or more years of relevant software engineering experience  
- Eight or more years of experience leading multiple software engineering teams  
 

Preferred Skills 

• Extensive Leadership Experience in technology, with 10+ years in financial services leading large-scale, mission-critical platforms. Proven success managing large global engineering teams (100+ staff) and operating at an executive (SVP/Director) level. 

• Core Banking Expertise: Deep knowledge of core banking systems (deposits, pricing, rates, fees) and high-volume transaction processing. Experience with Hogan mainframe-based cores and Zafin or similar Tier-1 banking platforms strongly preferred. 

• Operational & Risk Excellence: Demonstrated ability to ensure 24x7 system availability and operational rigor in highly regulated environments. Adept at incident response, root-cause analysis, and risk management, with a strong track record of meeting compliance and audit standards. 

• Strategic Modernization: Proven track record of driving multi-year, enterprise-scale modernization or transformation initiatives (e.g., API adoption, event streaming integration, cloud enablement) while balancing strategic vision with hands-on execution. 

• Financial & Governance Acumen: Experience managing large technology budgets and complex portfolios, making disciplined decisions on investment prioritization. Comfortable engaging in formal governance, steering committees, and financial reviews to justify and optimize platform investments. 

• People & Culture Leadership: Exceptional people leadership skills – able to develop senior engineering leaders, build a culture of accountability and innovation, and ensure leadership continuity through succession planning and talent development. 

• Cross-Functional Influence: Highly effective at influencing and collaborating across product, operations, finance, risk, and vendor partners. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts in clear, business-oriented language to executive and non-technical audiences.