Executive Director Engineering and Data

The Executive Director of Engineering and Data is responsible for driving technological innovation and operational excellence across engineering, data, and operational businesses, ensuring the effective and efficient design, implementation, and operation of data and engineering processes, driving digital innovation, and enabling organizational success. This role emphasizes the seamless integration of advanced digital solutions and efficient processes to support the organization's strategic goals. Collaborating closely with Business and Operations teams, this role ensures the seamless integration of advanced digital solutions and efficient processes to support the organization's strategic objectives. In this senior leadership position, the Executive Director will oversee a team of Practice/Chapter Leads and work alongside senior business leaders to deliver cutting-edge engineering and data solutions that align with corporate strategies and objectives.

This role requires strong leadership in managing end-to-end operational processes in accordance with prevailing Laws and Regulations, fostering talent, and ensuring regulatory compliance while leveraging technological advancements to meet customer and organizational needs.

Your role:

Key Responsibilities:

Leadership and Strategy:

• Directs the development and implementation of the engineering and data strategies in line with Garanti BBVA’s corporate goals and strategic priorities.

• Provides leadership to Practice/Chapter Leads to manage resources (employees, budget, etc.) effectively, focusing on achieving strategic goals.

• Leads the senior management team in preparing business plans for both financial and non-financial objectives.

• Guides Practice/Chapter Leads to ensure harmonized, coordinated work across the engineering and data functions.

• Oversees the development of technological strategies to solve customer needs and works in collaboration with BBVA Holding for aligned cooperation across the organization.

Operational and Performance Management:

• Monitors progress against the organization's strategic objectives and offers guidance to ensure targets are met.

• Provides direction for ensuring that all banking and enterprise applications, and supporting infrastructure, operate securely and reliably.

• Ensures compliance with banking regulations, SOX, DORA, and other relevant legal standards.

• Directs control activities within responsible business areas to maintain alignment with internal rules and external requirements.

Customer and Business Collaboration:

• Works closely with the Bank’s business leaders to provide timely, high-quality technological solutions that support their strategic objectives.

• Accountable for delivering robust IT processes that ensure high resilience and reliable technology services for banking and enterprise applications.

• Third-Party and Vendor/ Partnership Management: Further develops and maintains the current and future strategic partnerships

• Leads the evaluation and selection of third-party technological solutions and outsourcing opportunities (SAAS, PAAS, BPO) and maintains close relationships with the technology services community in the Netherlands and global technology servicers

• Manages relationships with existing external technology service providers, ensuring successful project delivery and adherence to service-level agreements (SLAs).

Budget and Financial Management:

• Prepares and manages the technology budget, ensuring optimal allocation and utilization of capex and opex resources.

Talent Development:

• Leads the talent development strategy within the engineering and data teams.

• In line with the reports of the positions subordinate to him/her, he/she follows the status of the determined targets in order to serve the strategic priorities and provides guidance to achieve the determined targets. follows up and provides guidance to achieve goals.

• Holds regular meetings with business area leaders and evaluates their work performance.

• Monitors talent metrics such as turnover, engagement, and development scores to ensure a thriving, motivated workforce.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Service Reliability: Achievement of service-level reliability metrics for IT systems.

• Financial Management: Effective management of capex and opex budgets, and personnel expenses.

• Business Enablement: Contribution to business success and strategic priorities through technological solutions and customer satisfaction metrics.

• Security: Strong cybersecurity preparation, controls, incident- and crisis management.

• Strategic Execution: Successful execution of the technology strategy, driving the digital transformation agenda.

• Talent Development: Metrics around employee engagement, development, and leadership effectiveness.

 Complexity of Role:

Strategic Leadership

Strategic Influence: As the Executive Director, you will shape and drive the technological vision for the organization. This includes ensuring that engineering and data strategies align with Garanti BBVA’s long-term objectives. Your decisions will directly affect the company’s market position and innovation strategies.

High-Level Decision Making: You will make decisions that have broad implications for both engineering and data teams, which in turn will impact multiple business units. These decisions will be influenced by market conditions, business trends, and future growth strategies.

Innovation and Transformation: A critical aspect of this role is leading transformational initiatives. The role demands foresight in adopting cutting-edge technologies to keep Garanti BBVA competitive in an ever-evolving financial and technological landscape.

Operational Oversight

Comprehensive Management: This role requires overseeing the execution of engineering and data strategies across various departments, including ensuring that both customer-facing and back-end systems are highly reliable, secure, and efficient.

Resource Allocation: You will be responsible for the optimal distribution of resources (budgets, personnel, and time) across departments. This requires balancing short-term operational needs with long-term strategic goals.

Risk Management: Given the critical nature of data security and regulatory compliance in the banking industry, identifying, mitigating, and managing risks are core components of the role.

Stakeholder Engagement

External Representation: You will represent Garanti BBVA at senior-level meetings with external stakeholders, regulators, and industry leaders. This role requires not only technical expertise but also the ability to communicate complex engineering and data-related topics to non-technical audiences.

Interdepartmental Coordination: You will drive collaboration across different business units, ensuring alignment between engineering, data, and broader business objectives. Clear and consistent communication across these teams is crucial.

Client and Market Relationships: Maintaining relationships with key clients and understanding market trends will help guide the development of technology solutions that meet both regulatory standards and customer expectations.

Organizational Development

Talent Management: As a leader of leaders, you will mentor senior managers, guiding them in talent development and succession planning. This requires fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning.

Performance Management: You will set and review performance goals for departments under your leadership, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives. This includes assessing key metrics like customer satisfaction, financial performance, and technical reliability.

Culture and Engagement: Promoting a culture of diversity, inclusion, and employee engagement is essential. You will be responsible for cultivating an environment where engineering and data teams feel motivated to deliver high-quality solutions.

Process and Performance Improvement

Operational Excellence: Continuous improvement in efficiency and productivity is essential. The role involves driving initiatives that enhance the performance of both engineering and data teams through process innovation and technological advancements.

Benchmarking and Best Practices: You will establish benchmarks and integrate best practices from the industry to ensure that Garanti BBVA remains competitive in the market.

Financial Stewardship

Budget Management: You will manage significant budgets, ensuring the alignment of financial resources with both engineering and data strategy. This includes capex and opex control to optimize resource allocation.

Financial Oversight: Providing high-level financial analysis, you will make decisions that affect the overall financial health of Garanti BBVA’s technology functions, ensuring that investments in technology are yielding appropriate returns.

Complex Problem Solving

Strategic Problem Resolution: You will tackle high-impact, cross-functional problems, often requiring innovative and multi-disciplinary approaches. The ability to balance short-term fixes with long-term structural changes is key.

Change Management: Given the dynamic nature of the tech and banking industries, you will lead change initiatives to ensure smooth transitions when new technologies or processes are introduced, ensuring that the organization adapts seamlessly to new developments.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for a colleague who embodies leadership and innovation, with a natural passion for technology and a deep understanding of how to navigate complex, high-performance environments. You have a proven track record of managing large, dynamic teams in regulated industries, thriving on challenges, and delivering impactful results. Your curiosity drives you to question the status quo, always seeking new ways to enhance systems and processes.

You are proactive and forward-thinking, with the ability to build long-term strategies that align with corporate goals. As a collaborative leader, you excel in fostering strong relationships, both within your team and across stakeholders, ensuring shared success. Your knowledge of banking technology, cybersecurity, and IT governance is solid, and you confidently navigate the intricacies of the technology services community, leveraging your extensive network in the Netherlands and beyond.

If you are open-minded, adaptable, and ready to lead in a fast-changing environment, we look forward to welcoming you to the team!

Skills/Qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience in IT leadership roles, with a focus on engineering, data management, infrastructure management or related areas.
  
• Proven track record of leading large, complex teams in a high-performance, regulated environment.
  
• Strong knowledge of banking technology, cybersecurity, and IT governance frameworks.
  
• Demonstrated ability to build and execute long-term strategic plans aligned with corporate objectives.
  
• Excellent leadership, communication, and decision-making skills.
  
• Has a good network within the technology services community in the Netherlands and global technology servicers

Education:

• Master’s or Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Science, Engineering, Business Administration, or a related discipline with significant relevant experience (15+ years) and demonstrated expertise in IT leadership, engineering, or data management.
• Additional qualifications such as an MBA or certifications in areas like IT governance (e.g., COBIT, ITIL), cybersecurity (e.g., CISSP, CISM), or data management can be highly advantageous.

What we offer.

• Becoming part of a dynamic team in an international working environment.
• 30 vacation days.
• 13th Month.
• 8% holiday payment
• Laptop and Mobile phone.
• Annual extra appreciation payment.
• Pension Plan - Defined contribution scheme
• Collective Health Insurance – discount on additional health insurance.
• Educational budget and access to Coursera trainings

Our organization:

Work at Garanti BBVA International
Garanti BBVA International (“GBI”) is a mid-sized European bank established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands since 1990 and serves to corporate and institutional and retail clientele. GBI is a wholly owned subsidiary of Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S. (Garanti) and has presence in Germany, Switzerland and Turkey. Our ultimate parent is BBVA. Aa dynamic “global boutique” bank, Garanti BBVA International offers fast, accurate, innovative, tailor-made and country-specific financial solutions in selected business lines though highly skilled and diverse talent management. We embrace creativity, are centered towards teamwork and oriented to create multicultural environment as we believe this to be a crucial element. Our vision is future-oriented and as a one big team GBI strives for corporate excellence and goal achievement. By joining our organization, you will find yourself constantly challenged and must be prone to apply out-of-the box thinking.

Life at Garanti BBVA International

GBI is a place for people who dream big and make their dream their goal. We look for people who will challenge the status quo in order to grow. We stand as one team, one family and together we are empowered to create our unique path, be agile, be curious and innovative. Strong partnerships ensure our success. Strong teams hold our foundation. We believe that diversity drives innovation and fosters personal development. We aim to create a working environment where employees are able to learn through support and coaching while contributing visibly to the success of bank.

Our Core Values

GBI is part of BBVA, an integrated and innovative financial institution that looks to the future, created with the mission of financing people’s dreams. That spirit continues to inspire us today and encourages us to transform people’s lives by helping them make the best decisions to fulfil their dreams. This mission is underpinned by our Purpose: “To bring the age of opportunity to everyone”. We live these values, which make us strong and allow us to achieve our purpose so we can keep creating opportunities.

Customer Comes First
We see our work from the customer's perspective, as we incorporate their point of view in every decision we make and always put their interests first. We meet our customer's needs in an agile way, overcoming any difficulties that arise.

Think Big
We want to amaze our customers with the best solutions to generate unique experiences. To achieve this, we set ambitious and inspirational challenges for ourselves, while questioning everything we do and posing new ways of doing things.

One Team
We are committed both to our individual role and the company's objectives as our own. We work as one team, trust our colleagues and break silos between units and hierarchical barriers.

Application:

If you are ready to join our team and contribute to the success of company, we encourage you to apply by submitting your resume and a cover letter. You have two options to apply:

• Online Application: Click on the link below to access our online application portal and submit your application.

We appreciate your interest in our organization and look forward to reviewing your application. Should you have any questions or require further information, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Please note that we do not appreciate any acquisition efforts for this vacancy by recruitment agencies.