Head Architect, Financial Markets

This job is with Standard Chartered Bank, an inclusive employer and a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ+ business community.

SCB aspires to uplift the financial markets technology estate to modern architecture to provide solid foundation for business. This role is pivotal to meet these outcomes. During the definition phase, as a seasoned architecture professional, FM architect will be responsible for leading the "to-be" architecture definition in partnership with business, operations and technology teams. During the implementation phase he/she will lead solution effort to ensure that solution not only meets functional / non-functional requirements but also architecture strategy/standards/patterns and engineering principles. He/she will also influence enterprise tech/architecture standards as Domain architect and contribute actively to group-wide initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with business, product, tech, delivery, and others to define the target, roadmap and periodically refresh the same.
• Drive standardization of applications, elimination of duplication and reduction of costs within domain from technology / architecture perspective.
• Define architecture principles, reusable patterns, integration standards and guardrails for the domain and work closely with the development teams to implement the same.
• Drive domain APIs design and adoption.
• Evaluate different solution options for business requirements and recommend best option to move forward.
• Keeping track of industry developments, conducting R&D to incorporate best in class practices and methodologies and sharing the same with team and stakeholders.
• Chair and run governance forums - Architecture review forum, tech design authority to provide guidance and govern that investment dollars actually move towards target state.
• Align architecture across different domains within bank from integration standard perspectives, to eliminate frictions and enable teams move forward.
• Create / Review solution intent documents from perspectives including stability, resilience, performance, recoverability, availability, scale, DR and security.
• Lead domain architecture in group wide initiatives.
• Evaluate vendor solutions during RFP process and propose the best fit approach.
• Guide and coach development teams and junior architects to meet architecture outcomes.
• Eliminate decision stall by aligning solutions / strategy with different domains.
• Participate in code reviews, assist & mentor team on technical aspects.

Key Expertise

• Ability to define the future and explain for various initiatives - what are the outcomes, how it should work, who will do what, how will systems interact and how will the process, systems and data coherently align to meet the goals.
• Functional skills - Ability to create e2e functional architecture for products and services in Financial Markets domain - Pricing, Trading, Risk Management, Settlement, Confirmation, Reporting, Data platforms.
• Engineering skills - Microservices architecture, experience in platform as a service, Cloud, Devops, SRE, Observability, Security, API management, Integration technologies.
• Process skills - Ability to drive process and operational standardization.
• Strategy - Ability to straddle both big picture and the low level developer concerns.
• Communication - Skilled in presenting complex ideas in simple fashion.
• Ability to influence, negotiate and collaborate to meet the outcomes at different levels in the bank.
• Listening skills and ability to empathize with others outcomes / concerns.
• Documentation - Ability to create good quality documents, diagrams and ability to review various documents.
• Excellent executive presence, written and oral communication skills with ability to manage upwards and downwards.
• Strong leadership skills and outcome oriented to drive forward looking momentum / conversations.

Regulatory & Business Conduct

• Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group's Values and Code of Conduct.
• Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank.
• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key stakeholders

• Financial Markets Business Program Managers/ Accountable Executives.
• Enterprise Architects.
• Development Managers/leads across FM Technology.
• CIO Financial Markets.

Other Responsibilities

• Ability to make decisions and guide team to deliver things on time.
• Guide and coach junior architects.

Skills and Experience

• Knowledge of Financial Markets.
• Architectural experience in large transformation programs.
• Domain architecture, target state, roadmaps, Domain APIs.
• Data strategy.
• Communication Skills.
• Demonstrated proficiency across key technologies.
• Strong conviction and ability to drive to the right target not necessarily the easy one.

Qualifications

• Graduate in Computer Science or Related Courses.
• Bachelor's in computer science, software engineering or related technical field. Masters in any field is an added advantage.
• 15+ years of total experience in an architecture role for multi-country, multi-product large transformation(s) / legacy replacement program(s) in a large tier 1 bank in financial markets domain.
• Demonstrated experience in defining target technology state vision, architectural roadmap, and engineering/integration standards.
• Domain knowledge across financial market products, regulatory requirements, confirmation & settlement process, market data providers, liquidity & portfolio management, risk management.
• Demonstrated proficiency across key technologies - Cloud-native technologies, APIs, spring boot microservices, Devops, application security, DLTs, SaaS, data (real time, data lakes), SRE Infra, event sourcing, Caching strategies, REST/ GRPC/JSON / Solace / KAFKA / Oracle/ PostgreSQL.
• Expertise/background in implementing/designing ultra low latency trading platforms and/or scalable Transaction processing systems.
• Expertise in interoperability and integration within / outside the bank.
• Proven experience in vendor selection, RFP process.
• Proven experience in defining solutions that deliver stability, resilience, recoverability, availability, performance, scale, Disaster recovery (DR) and security.
• TOGAF or similar certification.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do.
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well.
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term.

What we offer

• In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.
• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits.
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.