About The Role:

The Strategy & Innovation Manager is a core member of the Security Centre of Excellence (CoE) and acts as a transformation catalyst for the bank's cybersecurity function. Working closely with the Head of CoE, the role bearer combines structured strategic thinking with a hands-on execution mindset - scanning forward-looking security trends, generating well-structured proposals, reimagining existing processes, shaping new capability builds, and driving initiatives end-to-end across ISG, IT and business teams.

The role requires intellectual curiosity, the ability to frame ambiguous problems into clear, evidence-based proposals, and the ability to influence without direct authority across functions and seniority levels.

Key Responsibilities:

Emerging Trends & Opportunity Analysis:

- Scan and synthesize forward-looking security trends, technologies and regulatory developments relevant to the bank (e.g., AI security, cyber risk quantification etc.)

- Produce briefs on emerging-trends and horizon-scanning reports

- Benchmark the bank's cyber posture against BFSI peers and global standards (NIST, ISO, RBI mandates), and identify whitespace opportunities and capability gaps

Innovation & Process Transformation:

- Support the CoE Head in maintaining and refining the multi-year cybersecurity strategy and roadmap

- Help define the target state for new cyber capabilities the bank needs to build (e.g., AI SOC, AI security) and shape the plan to get there

- Build business cases and investment rationale for new capabilities or tooling, and design proof-of-concept frameworks to test them before scaling

- Identify friction points, redundancies and manual steps in existing security processes

Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Collaboration:

- Collaborate with ISG, IT and business stakeholders to design and implement future-state processes

- Manage assigned initiative workstreams end-to-end: planning, stakeholder coordination, milestone tracking, and issue resolution

- Work with IT and business teams to align initiatives with business priorities and ensure timely, cross-functional delivery

Budgeting & Investment Support:

- Support the CoE Head in building and managing the annual cybersecurity budget; help track actuals against budget and prepare forecasts and reallocations

- Develop ROI analysis to prioritize and allocate funding across cyber initiatives

- Support coordination with Finance and Procurement on approvals

Performance Monitoring:

- Track and report measurable impact of process and capability changes post-implementation

- Define the right KRIs to measure, build dashboards, and ensure the function operates with a clear data-backed view of performance

- Establish feedback loops so that learnings from implemented initiatives inform future strategy

Secondary Responsibilities:

- Build and maintain knowledge repositories on emerging cyber topics

- Promote security-awareness culture across the bank through campaigns and structured engagement

- Coordinate with vendors, external experts and industry forums to gather inputs, benchmarks and emerging practice that feed the CoE's work

Experience:

- Good experience across diverse sectors, functions, or roles, with a track record of strategy, innovation, or transformation work; experience within BFSI preferred (non-mandatory)

- Demonstrated ability in structured problem-solving, process improvement, and end-to-end initiative delivery; experience in banking, fintech, or cybersecurity is a plus but not mandatory

Skills & Competencies:

- Strong structured thinking: ability to frame ambiguous problems and develop clear, evidence-based proposals

- Effective communicator - able to distil complex cyber topics into crisp, board-ready narratives

- Self-starter with high ownership mindset; comfortable operating with limited supervision

- Collaborative stakeholder management skills, with ability to influence across functions and seniority levels

- Curiosity and learning agility - stays current with industry trends, evolving GenAI technologies and best practice