Emerging Payments EMEA Regional Lead - Senior Vice President

The Emerging Payments EMEA Regional Lead is accountable for the management of Emerging Payments Production Services, part of the wider Payments Services. You will lead and direct a team of professionals and act as a delegate to the Global Head of Emerging Payments. The role requires a comprehensive understanding of end‑to‑end payments processing in order to meet the objectives of the function. You must be able to apply an in-depth understanding of the business impact of technical contributions. As a technical leader, you will be instrumental in defining and implementing advanced observability, resiliency, and recoverability solutions. You will engage with core technology, architecture, and teams across Citi to ensure the highest levels of application stability, performance, and operational excellence for our Payments platform globally. This is a unique opportunity to combine deep technical expertise with strategic leadership to drive significant impact in a high‑visibility, high‑transaction environment.

Responsibilities

• Regional Leadership: Define, build, and lead a best‑in‑class technical support function for Citi’s Emerging Payments application, setting strategic direction for operational excellence and ensuring application support aligns with the broader technology function.
• Technical Deep Dive & Hands‑On Expertise: Provide strong hands‑on technical leadership in designing, implementing, and continuously improving observability, resiliency, and recoverability solutions, including advanced monitoring, logging, tracing, auto‑healing, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Architectural Influence: Collaborate strategically with Citi’s architecture and enterprise teams to advocate for and implement supportability, resilience, and operational best practices within the application’s design and infrastructure.
• Service Level Enhancement: Continuously improve the service level provided by the team to end‑users, maximizing operational efficiencies, strengthening incident and problem management, and enhancing knowledge sharing practices.
• Application Governance: Define and implement robust application onboarding guidelines and standards to ensure consistent and high‑quality deployments, guiding development teams on stability and supportability improvements.
• Management & Team Development: Take full responsibility for one or more teams, overseeing people, budget, planning, performance evaluation, compensation, hiring, disciplinary actions, terminations, and budget approval. Coach team members to maximize potential and foster an integrated team environment.
• Vendor Management: Oversee vendor relationships, including offshore managed services, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and service level agreements.
• Operational Efficiency & Cost Reduction: Drive cost reductions and efficiencies across supported portfolios through root cause analysis, knowledge management, performance tuning, and user training; ensure adherence to all support process and tool standards and create or enhance processes for consistency and quality.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Participate in business review meetings, relating technology strategies to business requirements. Communicate effectively with senior leadership, product teams, development teams, and external stakeholders on application status, operational risks, and strategic initiatives.
• Risk & Compliance: Assess risk in business decisions, safeguarding Citigroup, clients, and assets. Drive compliance with applicable laws, rules, regulations, and policy; exercise sound ethical judgment and report control issues with transparency. Supervise activities and enforce accountability for standards.

Qualifications

• Relevant experience with a strong technical background in instant payments or real‑time financial transaction processing systems.
• Expertise in automation, scripting (e.g., Python, Go, Shell), and infrastructure‑as‑code principles.
• Exceptional leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and drive strategic initiatives across diverse technical and business teams.
• Proven ability to manage complex technical issues, prioritize effectively, and make sound decisions under pressure.
• Experience building, mentoring, and leading high‑performing technical teams.

Education

• Bachelor’s or university degree; master’s degree preferred.

Benefits

• 27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• A discretionary annual performance‑related bonus
• Private medical care & life insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Pension plan
• Paid parental leave
• Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
• Access to an array of learning and development resources

Alongside these benefits, Citi is committed to ensuring our workplace is where everyone feels comfortable coming to work as their whole self, every day. We want the best talent around the world to be energized to join us, motivated to stay, and empowered to thrive.

EEO Statement

Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review accessibility at Citi.