ED, Core Banking Tech Strategy & Architecture Lead

Headquartered in Tokyo, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) is a leading global financial institution and a core member of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC Group). Built upon our rich Japanese heritage since 1876, we put our customers first and provide seamless access to, from and within the Asia Pacific region.   SMBC is one of the largest Japanese banks by assets and maintain strong credit ratings across our global integrated network.  We work closely as one SMBC Group to offer personal, corporate and investment banking services to meet the needs of our customers.

With sustainability embedded within our strategy and operations, we are committed to creating a society in which today’s generation can enjoy economic prosperity and well-being, and pass it on to future generations.

Key Responsibilities

Target-State Architecture and Technology Strategy

• Partner with enterprise architecture and business leadership to define, design, and champion the end-to-end target-state architecture, platform strategy, and integration roadmap for core banking and payments transformation.

• Drive the technical vision for modernising legacy platforms into modular, API-led, microservices-based, and modular capabilities that ensure high availability and operational resilience.

• Establish robust engineering standards, non-functional requirements (NFRs), and design patterns across data migration, security, performance, and scalability.

• Balance global architecture consistency with local market regulatory and infrastructure requirements across multiple jurisdictions.

• Champion technology innovation, incorporating automation, data analytics, and emerging technologies to future-proof the bank's core infrastructure.

Technical Governance, Quality Assurance, and Engineering Oversight

• Establish and operate technical governance forums, architecture review boards (ARBs), and design authorities to ensure solutions adhere to enterprise standards and security baselines.

• Oversee the full technical delivery lifecycle—from solution design, prototyping, and engineering build through to complex integration, rigorous testing (functional, resilience, performance, and security), and zero-downtime cutover planning.

• Provide technical quality assurance, reviewing critical design decisions, code quality metrics, and technical debt mitigation plans across workstreams.

• Proactively identify, assess, and remediate technical, architectural, and security risks, ensuring strict compliance with banking regulations, data privacy laws, and other governance frameworks.

Financial and Resource Management

• Collaborate with programme leadership to forecast, manage, and optimise the technology and architecture budget, tracking capital and operational expenditures, vendor licensing, and infrastructure hosting costs.

Vendor and Technology Partner Management

• Lead technical engagement with core banking software vendors, infra providers, system integrators, and technology partners.

• Oversee technical evaluations, proof-of-concepts (PoCs), contract negotiations, and service-level agreements (SLAs) to ensure vendors deliver high-quality engineering outputs and adhere to architectural blueprints.

• Direct multi-location technical delivery across in-house engineering squads, global capability centres (GCCs), and external vendor teams.

Leadership, Talent Development, and Collaboration

• Lead, mentor, and scale high-performing multidisciplinary technology teams, including solution architects, enterprise integration specialists, software engineers, and technical product owners.

• Cultivate an engineering culture focused on continuous improvement, automation, agile delivery, and high technical standards.

• Foster strong cross-functional collaboration with business sponsors, operations, risk, compliance, and cybersecurity teams to ensure seamless alignment between technical delivery and operational readiness.

Conduct and Regulatory Responsibilities

• Demonstrate exemplary conduct, uphold the bank's values and Code of Conduct, and take personal responsibility for embedding high standards of ethics and regulatory compliance across all technical and architectural deliverables.

Key Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.

• 15+ years of experience in enterprise technology, software engineering, and architecture within banking or financial services, with a proven track record of leading large-scale core banking and payments transformations.

• Deep, hands-on architectural and technical expertise in modernising legacy core banking engines, real-time payments infrastructure, and corporate/transaction banking systems.

• Comprehensive understanding of modern technology paradigms: API-led connectivity, microservices architectures, flexible deployments, event-driven architecture, and containerisation.

• Strong working knowledge of data migration strategies, data integrity validation, and complex system cutover execution for mission-critical financial systems.

• Proven ability to design and implement robust non-functional requirements (NFRs) covering high availability, disaster recovery, enterprise security, and cryptographic standards.

• Strong executive presence with exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills, capable of translating complex technical concepts into clear business strategies for executive leadership and regulatory bodies.

• Experience managing large, matrixed technical teams and strategic tier-1 technology vendors across multiple geographies and global capability centres.

• Experience executing multi-country or cross-border core banking rollouts with complex local regulatory data residency requirements.

• Background in driving large-scale engineering transformations using Agile and DevOps/SRE delivery methodologies.