IT Area Lead

The organisation

ING is a global financial institution with a strong European base and a worldwide presence. The bank offers retail and commercial banking services to 38 million customers in over 40 countries. All 57,000 employees are guided by the same values of transparancy, integrity, and social responsibility.

The world of banking has changed significantly in recent years. ING has responded to these changes – and set itself up to anticipate future changes – with its Think Forward Strategy. This strategy is aimed at simplifying and streamlining the organization by championing a performance culture and aiming for operational excellence.

ING has become a leader in IT, with an agile organization and a relentless focus on (digital) customer experience and compliance. ING invests heavily in technology and innovation and boasts a staff of engineers who are at the top of their field, allowing the company to be a data-driven digital frontrunner driven by state-of-the-art engineering.

Of course, aside from the banking and customer-facing operations, ING also needs excellent internal IT operations to enable all its people and business functions to perform at the top of their game. This is the responsibility of the Employee Tech Services department, part of ING Group Services’ Corporate Technology function.

The position

ING’s mission is to empower people to stay one step ahead in life and in business. The Employee Tech Services department translates this mission to the bank’s internal operations and employee journey. The IT Area Lead is pivotal in defining the internal operations’ IT roadmap and leading the teams responsible for implementing it worldwide.

Tasks & responsibilities

The IT Area Lead is part of the Tribe Leadership Team at Employee Tech Services – reporting to the IT Lead for Corporate Technology – and defines the Tribe’s IT direction and roadmap. The IT Area lead works intensively with business partners: most notably Global HR, but also Corporate Real Estate & Facility Management, and Marketing & Communications. The focus of these cooperations is always to continuously improve the employee journey, by selecting or designing, building, and implementing the best tools for each step along that journey.

The IT Area Lead is responsible for seven teams or Chapters, each with one manager (called Chapter Lead) who reports directly to the IT Area Lead. Combined, these Chapters contain circa 100 fte. The Chapters work on various applications and services, with a heavy focus on SaaS., from different locations across the globe: amongst others the Netherlands, the UK, Poland, and India.
“The biggest challenge in this role is to bring these teams from different locations together in terms of focus and way of working, and to create a unified team culture. For this, a senior IT leader with solid stakeholder management capabilities is required.” – Pierre-Julien Dechassat, Recruiter at ING

The IT Area Lead is responsible for the IT continuity and the availability of services delivered to business partners, as well as onboarding new solutions and ensuring their compliance with security standards. Given that the business partners deal with personal and sensitive data, the department has a strong focus on IT risk. The IT Area Lead acts as a role model toward the team members (both Chapter Leads and the engineers on the teams) when it comes to security and compliance.

The IT Area Lead is responsible for the Tribe’s budget and FTE planning. They have a strategic voice and the ability to work well with global stakeholders in defining the Tribe’s IT strategy and prioritizing goals. They are also involved in sizeable global roll-out programs aimed at standardizing processes and tools, such as the global implementation of the Workday application. The IT Area Lead safeguards such programs and ensures that the Tribe delivers on expectations.

ING is a cutting-edge organization that is constantly transforming, both due to the nature of the banking landscape in general, and because of ING’s Think Forward Strategy. The IT Area Lead needs to ensure that the seven Chapters under their supervision respond to ongoing changes with agility, flexibility, and anticipation. This is an opportunity for a seasoned tech leader, with a senior approach to stakeholder management and business decisions, to have an impact on the employee journey of the entire global ING staff, and thereby on ING’s success as a whole.

Candidate profile*

• Over 10 years of experience in IT
• Within banking, or other complex, compliance-heavy tech organizations
• Operational excellence
• Global distributed teams
• Stakeholder management

* Research shows that while male candidates feel confident enough to apply when they meet about 60% of the requirements, female candidates only apply when they tick every box. So if this role has your name on it, but you’re not sure about the criteria, we still want to hear from you.

Interested?

You can apply to this postion by using the link below. ING is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.