Chief Architect

The organisation

ING is a global financial institution of Dutch origin, offering retail- and commercial banking services to customers in over 40 countries. The banking landscape has to change drastically, to cope with ever increasing regulations. ING is responding in a revolutionary way with a fully componentized architecture and its Think Forward strategy. With this strategy ING aims to create a differentiating customer experience for millions of customers worldwide while keeping the regulators at bay. ING Wholesale is responsible for all interbank transactions in terms of financing, lending, and trading between large corporates and other financial entities. It also provides the Global Treasury backbone on which consumer banking products are developed and financed.

The position

To further consolidate ING's position in the international financial market, the architecture at ING Wholesale Bank needs to be further simplified and taken to a next level that supports the digitalisation of customer journeys. The new Chief Architect will shape the target state of the future and guide a team of 20+ experienced architects with making todays design decisions that drive the vision of the future.

Architecture at ING needs to become more future-proof, more future-oriented, and a more proactive and prominent internal business partner. The new Chief Architect will shape the vision for the architecture of the future, as well as manage and guide the experienced and technically very well-versed team in making that vision come to life. She or he will play a key role in ensuring that ING Wholesale lives up to its reputation as the most innovative and agile bank, within the boundaries of regulatory and Availability requirements.

The Chief Architect will report to the CIO and lead a team of about 30 people in Amsterdam. The main challenge will be to bring the architecture into a shape that customer-, and employee journeys can be re-imagined and digitilized. On the other hand - and above all – the IT estate must be simplified and consolidated in a way that regulations (i.e. ESG) or Market innovations (i.e. SWIFT & T2 NextGen messaging) can be implemented only once, rather than in a dozen different systems. Last but not least ING has developed a common Banking Technology Platform to which ING Wholesale must adopt to as well.

To put it into perspective: ING Wholesale owns hundreds of applications, a lot of which are legacy systems. Additionally, there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to digitizing fairly complex processes - so the new Chief Architect will be someone with experience in this domain.

Candidate profile

The Chief Architect will have a strong technical background and a proven track record of leadership. She or he will have to manage a solid, knowledgeable, and experienced team, helping it to evolve and change, and even adding new and more diverse talent to make it more future-proof. This role requires experience in complex, international environments that are highly regulated and risk-, compliance-, and regulation-driven. This is a great challenge for an experienced architect with a vision, who wants to contribute to the reliability of systems on which a significant part of international economic traffic runs, and on which consumer products used by millions every day are based.

• Over 10 years of experience
• With Enterprise Architecture
• And People Management
• In a financial or otherwise highly regulated environment
• And in an international context

Interested?

You are invited to apply for this position by following the link below. ING Wholesale is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.