Head of Innovation Lab

SMBC Group is a top-tier global financial group. Headquartered in Tokyo and with a 400-year history, SMBC Group offers a diverse range of financial services, including banking, leasing, securities, credit cards, and consumer finance. The Group has more than 130 offices and 80,000 employees worldwide in nearly 40 countries. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (SMFG) is the holding company of SMBC Group, which is one of the three largest banking groups in Japan. SMFG’s shares trade on the Tokyo, Nagoya, and New York (NYSE: SMFG) stock exchanges.

In the Americas, SMBC Group has a presence in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. Backed by the capital strength of SMBC Group and the value of its relationships in Asia, the Group offers a range of commercial and investment banking services to its corporate, institutional, and municipal clients. It connects a diverse client base to local markets and the organization’s extensive global network. The Group’s operating companies in the Americas include Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC), SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc., SMBC Capital Markets, Inc., SMBC MANUBANK, JRI America, Inc., SMBC Leasing and Finance, Inc., Banco Sumitomo Mitsui Brasileiro S.A., and Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing Co., Ltd.

The anticipated salary range for this role is between $238,000.00 and $265,000.00. The specific salary offered to an applicant will be based on their individual qualifications, experiences, and an analysis of the current compensation paid in their geography and the market for similar roles at the time of hire. The role may also be eligible for an annual discretionary incentive award. In addition to cash compensation, SMBC offers a competitive portfolio of benefits to its employees.

Role Objectives

• Software Engineering Leadership: Lead a core team of software engineers team to develop and implement various core platforms including advanced analytics solutions, including AI, to enhance decision-making processes.
• Engineering Platform Development: Lead the delivery and enhancement of engineering platforms of AI PaaS and SaaS Platforms, Enterprise Development Platforms, Data Science Platforms, Cloud Lab Sandboxes and Cloud Automation Platforms.
• Governance: Evolve and maintain architecture governance frameworks, ensuring compliance with industry standards and best practices.
• Architecture Pattern Creation: Drive and deliver robust architecture patterns that ensure consistency, scalability, and performance across enterprise platforms.
• Architecture Definitions: Evolve architecture standards, principles, and guidelines for enterprise platforms to ensure alignment with business goals and technology strategies.
• Technical Strategy: Set and deliver evolving enterprise platform technical strategy, ensuring it supports overall business objectives and drives technological advancement. Communicate future vision roadmaps for AI and enterprise platforms, aligning with long-term business goals
• Emerging Technology : Drive the design and implementation of scalable, cutting-edge solutions that align with business objectives and enhance our banking ecosystems.
• Technology Delivery: Delivery new and current technology into SMBC, following and enhancing best practice and repeatable implementation patterns.
• Team Culture Development: Develop a culture and environment where experts thrive, oversee the development of competency models, career paths, and onboarding and training programs for the individuals in the group.
• Collaboration: Partner with cross-functional teams including IT, business executives, application developers, system engineers, and information security
• Executive Mindset: Partner and be seen as a key expert by SMBC internal groups, most notably senior leadership within our CDAO, CIO and CTO organizations.
  
  

Qualifications And Skills

• Experience: 15 years in IT with a focus on Share platforms, PaaS and IaaS integration, SaaS service platforms and AI.
• Experience: 10 years in enterprise scale platforms in leading development and software development teams.
• Leadership: Proven track record of delivering highly matrixed programs through direct management and indirect sponsorship in complex banking Technology environment.
• Skills as a Leader: Expertise in Software Engineering best practices, development and delivery of platforms in banking organization, architecture strategy development, pattern creation, architecture governance, architecture definitions, technical strategy.
• Technical Skills core background : Expertise in a least one major language, hands-on level knowledge of services such as microservice creation, API’s Catalogue development , AI services Gen AI, LLM and PaaS deployment, docker, Terraform
• Setting the Technology Foundations and Leading: With extensive hands-on experience of delivering with platforms in banking based on: Azure AI, Google Vertex AI, AI data catalog platforms, data science workbenches, and Databricks or similar.
• Product and Technical Expertise: Demonstrated ability to define and deliver new technology solutions within complex banking and digital banking ecosystems.
• Engineering Background: Possess a strong engineering background with experience in collaboration at senior levels in a complex regulatory environment.
• Global Management: Experience in managing and leading global teams, ensuring alignment and collaboration across different regions.
• Certifications: Preferred certifications in AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Education: MS in Computer Science, or related fields.
  
  

Key Attributes

• Visionary:   Ability to align technology with business objectives and deliver measurable results.
• Communicator:   Effective presentation skills capable of addressing both executive and technical audiences.
• Collaborator:   Strong collaboration skills at building cross-functional teams.
  
  

SMBC’s employees participate in a Hybrid workforce model that provides employees with an opportunity to work from home, as well as, from an SMBC office. SMBC requires that employees live within a reasonable commuting distance of their office location. Prospective candidates will learn more about their specific hybrid work schedule during their interview process. Hybrid work may not be permitted for certain roles, including, for example, certain FINRA-registered roles for which in-office attendance for the entire workweek is required.

SMBC provides reasonable accommodations during candidacy for applicants with disabilities consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application process, please let us know at accommodations@smbcgroup.com.