Director/Head - Real Time Communications - Bank

Director Platform Lead - Real Time Communications

- The Real Time Communications Lead will be responsible for leading and coordinating the bank's Real Time Communications services, ensuring that our customers and employees have access to high-quality and secure (UC), services.

- Reporting to the CTO Head of Colleague & Collaboration the role will work to ensure world class technology solutions that enable business success by leading strategy and delivery for Real Time Communications.

- Managing a direct team and budget of circa 100 resources, the role will support the outcomes of Vision '27 across Speed, Scale & Resilience whilst accelerating the build out and development of a world-class CTO capability that attracts, nurtures and retains talent.

Principal responsibilities :

- The person in this role will be commercially astute, an excellent communicator and able to partner strongly with executive level business stakeholders (Group General Managers and their teams). They will work with business leaders to define technology strategies, create new solutions and drive a culture of continuous improvement. They will also be partnering with other DBS and IT counterparts, at various executive levels of the organization including in-country leadership (CEO, COO, CIO).

- Develop and maintain the bank's Real Time Communications service portfolio

- Collaborate with other departments within the bank to ensure that services meet business

Requirements :

- Conduct assessments of services to identify opportunities for improvement.

- Develop and maintain metrics and reporting mechanisms to track performance and communicate results to stakeholders.

- Develop and deliver training programs to increase awareness and engagement of technology staff.

- Establish partnerships with external organizations to leverage expertise and resources.

- Stay up-to-date with industry trends, best practices, and regulations to ensure that the bank is always aligned with the latest developments.

- Manage budgets and resources as required.

- Lead a team of professionals and coordinate their activities to achieve goals.

- Develop and maintain relationships with vendors and service providers to ensure that the bank's services are optimized for performance, cost and security.

- Participate in the design and development of new services, working closely with other technology teams to ensure seamless integration with other systems and applications.

- Work closely with the bank's security and compliance teams to ensure that services are secure and compliant with all relevant regulations and industry standards.

- Develop and maintain disaster recovery and business continuity plans for the services.

- Lead the Real Time Communications Platform to successful delivery of business outcomes.

- Strong commercial awareness looking for ways to drive down RTB costs through automation, less TOIL and efficient use of Infrastructure.

- Ensure BANK technologies are standardized and aligned to customer needs.

- Promote the Net Zero strategy for CTO embedding best practices and consistency across the organization.

- Work with Regional CTO leaders to capture regional business requirements whilst ensuring global consistency

- Manage the associated budget, with ongoing focus on personnel, vendor, and capital expenditures.

- Build strong working relationships with Product Lines and business leaders to ensure teams meet expectations and contribute to the achievement of business goals.

- Collaborate with CTO Exco business leaders to develop short- and long-term strategic plans.

- Support and facilitate innovative and experimental software development work to test new ideas, within bounded cost and time frames.

- Provide leadership, vision, and direction for the CTO organization.

- Work with product management leadership to design, manage, and/or execute product roadmaps.

Talent Management Responsibilities :

- Develop workforce strategy to meet the organization's current and future needs through developing, hiring, and/or sourcing talent.

- Manage resource allocation across teams to maximize business impact of resources and ensure each team has the skills and capabilities needed to achieve its objectives.

- Manage talent, playing a key role in performance management and compensation processes, role and competency definition, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

- Partner with CTO HR to create learning and development opportunities aligned to the organization's skill and capability needs, and to provide rewarding career paths for software Enablement staff.

- Recruit and hire talent to address new needs and skill gaps.

- Facilitate collaboration and partnership across teams and stakeholders.

- Build a culture that supports learning, collaboration, transparency, and inclusiveness.

- Manage employee engagement and promote a compelling employee value proposition to retain staff.

Teamwork :

- Build and maintain the broad and diverse set of skills required to run the Real Time Communications Platform

- Provide strategic direction, leadership, support, guidance and management for the team

- Functional leadership of IT managers and ensure best practices for team management

- Strategic engagement with key 3rd parties and vendors to ensure a strong partnership is established for the strategic benefit of the Bank

- Establish a robust communication and support mechanism across CTO, Technology and Business teams

- Ensure the necessary resources are sourced to support demand

- Ensure there is a strong colleague development framework in place including succession planning, diversity balance, nurturing, coaching, skills development and career progression

Requirements :

- Proven industry experience of running a team including Real Time Communications leading on processes, technologies, challenges and strategy

- Understanding of integrating wider technology with RTC platforms (VDI, Zoom, Teams, endpoints)

- Expertise in Strategy, Business Planning, Governance and Stakeholder Management

- Knowledge of technology and technology trends, and the ability to provide technology consultancy to senior business heads

- Established industry relationships with Executives at large technology vendors

- Experience in planning and managing significant expenditure in a complex organization

- This role will operate in a global transformation capacity

- This role will require detailed understanding of all business areas across the bank and relevant technology domains

- The role will be responsible for developing thought leadership and best practice, including engagement with vendors / third parties

- Ability to work across cultures and all locations in a complex, matrix organization

- Proven experience as a Real Time Communications Lead, ideally in a banking or financial services organization.

- Strong technical knowledge of relevant technologies and DevOps ways of working.

- Excellent leadership and team management skills, with the ability to motivate and inspire teams to achieve their goals.

- Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to articulate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

- Ability to analyze complex technical and business problems and develop effective solutions.

- Able to manage a variety of senior stakeholder relationships and develop a trusting working relationship with them.

- Demonstrable success in understanding and delivering towards customer needs in large, global, complex organizations.

- Ability to work in an unstructured and changing environment.

- Ability to influence teams to think "outside" the box and look at solutions / approaches outside traditional comfort zones.

- Strong external vendor management skills.

- Good business sense and commercial acumen.

- Strong drive to get things done and work in an environment with many moving parts but still find a way forward.

- Ability to continually question and reduce costs.

- Excellent people management skills.

- Leading and directing executive and non-executive work groups and effecting change through people.

- Managing operational functions, directing process re-engineering and efficiency exercises.

- Strong ability to balance risks vs rewards and maximizing the cost effectiveness and profitability for the business.

- Strong people leadership, teamwork, gathering information and analyzing, judgment and decision making, communication competencies

- Respectful of different cultures, working with colleagues from across all 5 regions (North America, LATAM, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe

- Strong knowledge of Real Time communication technologies

- Experience in leading teams and coordinating activities towards common Real Time Communications goals

- Educated to degree level, ideally in an engineering or telecommunications discipline.

- Familiarity with regulatory and compliance requirements related to Real Time Communications

- Banking or financial services industry experience is a plus.