Head of Architecture - Information Technology

Responsibilities

• Responsible for defining and driving the Bank’s long-term technology architecture strategy to enable scalable digital transformation, efficient delivery, and innovation enablement
• This role ensures alignment between business strategy, IT execution, and future-state capabilities across the Bank’s core platforms, digital channels, data ecosystem, infrastructure, AI platforms, and security domains
• The successful candidate will lead and drive a high-performing architecture team, govern architectural standards and roadmaps, and serve as a key advisor to senior executives on technology enablement and modernization.
• Define architecture blueprints that support cost-effective, sustainable IT investment decisions and maximize technology ROI;
• Lead consolidation and modernization initiatives to reduce system complexity, and long-term maintenance costs;
• Build, manage and control financial plans for assigned programs and initiatives to ensure alignment with priorities and within approved budget;
• Provide comprehensive financial analysis and reporting to monitor and evaluate the application of financial resources.
• Partner with business stakeholders to translate customer journeys, product goals, and strategic initiatives into scalable and reusable technology building blocks;
• Ensure architectural choices support customer-centric design, performance, reliability, and agility across all delivery channels;
• Communicate architectural concepts and criticality of data and platform ownership to both business and IT executives;
• Liaise across business units and delivery teams to ensure timely alignment and implementation of solution designs as planned.
• Leverage application, data, integration, and AI platform technologies to support current and future-state business capabilities, ensuring modularity, scalability, and reusability across platforms;
• Lead and support key transformation initiatives and related projects by providing architecture direction, design oversight, and alignment with the Bank’s standards;
• Define architecture governance strategies, frameworks, policies, and standards to ensure alignment with the Bank’s business vision and objectives, and in compliance with internal controls and industry regulations;
• Oversee the solution design process for cross-domain architecture, identifying potential risks, technical debt, and design weaknesses across applications and infrastructure;
• Evaluate and recommend fit-for-purpose architecture patterns and emerging technologies; assess technical alternatives and advise on platform modernization paths, data infrastructure, and AI capabilities;
• Govern solution and process delivery in collaboration with data governance, infrastructure, and cyber teams, ensuring secure and compliant flows of data, models, and services across platforms and ecosystems.
• Drive a culture of architectural thinking, collaboration, and technical excellence across IT delivery and engineering teams;
• Build stakeholder alignment across IT, business, data, and risk functions.
• Ensure all architectural decisions and platform designs meet regulatory, audit, and data protection requirements;
• Identify and mitigate architectural risks, including technology obsolescence, scalability limitations, and integration weaknesses, and proactively embed risk controls into design governance processes.

Requirements

• University graduate in Computer Science or equivalent; OR
• Preferable over 20 years’ working experience in IT covering the followings:
• At least 10 years of experience in managing applications and/or architecture teams in large-scale enterprise environments;
• Proven track record in shaping enterprise architecture within regulated industries, ideally in the financial sector;
• Deep understanding of modern architecture practices including service-oriented architecture, cloud-native platforms, API ecosystems, data mesh, and AI platform enablement, etc.
• Experience spanning a broad range of enterprise architecture areas, including application and data architecture, infrastructure, AI technologies, and application development tools and engineering processes;
• Ideally with experience in leading legacy modernization and complex transformation programs across multiple architecture domains;
• Knowledgeable in working with outsourcing service providers and vendors;
• Structured thinking, strategic mindset, and ability to lead through ambiguity.
• Good command of both written and spoken English and Chinese, fluency in Putonghua is preferable.