Delivery Velocity & Execution Discipline

• Own the end-to-end delivery pipeline for all technology products and platforms, from idea to production, across multiple business domains simultaneously: Retail, Corporate, SME, Risk, Support functions and Subsidiaries.
• Drive predictable, time-boxed delivery using a structured stage-gate framework, with clear prioritization methodology based on business value, cost of delay and risk-adjusted return.
• Establish and track engineering performance metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, mean time to recovery) across all teams, providing full visibility to the CTO and business stakeholders.
• Ensure all regulatory delivery commitments, including DORA compliance, PCI DSS, ISO 20022, are met on schedule, treating compliance as an embedded design constraint, not an obstacle.

Engineering Culture & Developer Experience

• Define and drive the engineering culture strategy for a large engineering division, shifting the organizational identity from support function to genuine technology partner.
• Champion AI-assisted and, progressively, AI-native development adoption across the full software development lifecycle - not as a talking point, but as a measurable improvement in delivery capacity.
• Drive engineering excellence standards: CI/CD maturity, automated testing, technical debt management, code review practices and internal developer platform development.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement through blameless post-mortems, value stream mapping and engineering guilds.

Organizational Design & Talent Development

• Lead the cultural and operational integration of the engineering division, ensuring team cohesion and a unified identity.
• Design optimal team topologies aligned to business domains and technical solutions.
• Build a talent strategy that makes the organization a genuine employer of choice for engineers in Romania - through clarity of mission, engineering standards and growth opportunity.

Strategic Partnership & Stakeholder Management

• Act as the primary technology delivery interface to all business lines, translating business needs into delivery roadmaps with clear timelines.
• Present delivery performance, risk and investment cases to board-level and executive committees, operating credibly at both strategic and sprint-level altitude.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture, IT Operations and Data Management on target-state blueprints, shift-left initiatives and AI/ML model operationalization.

Vendor Management & Accountability

• Own vendor delivery accountability - third parties augment capacity, but outcomes remain with this role
• Negotiate and manage vendor contracts with focus on quality, SLA compliance, and cost efficiency
• Drive vendor consolidation strategy and build/buy/partner frameworks
• Ensure vendor teams operate within Bank’s SDLC, security, and quality standards

Ideal Profile

• 10+ years in technology leadership, with at least 5 years managing large-scale engineering organizations, with direct ownership of engineering output, not just project coordination.
• Proven track record of improving delivery velocity measurably in complex, regulated environments such as banking, fintech, telecom or comparable industries.
• Experience leading organizational design at scale: team topologies, career frameworks, post-merger integration and talent development programs.
• Strong understanding of modern SDLC practices: CI/CD, trunk-based development, automated testing, infrastructure as code.
• Hands-on experience integrating AI tools into the development lifecycle, such as code assistants, automated testing, AI-powered code review, as a genuine productivity multiplier.
• Builder mindset: designs delivery organizations from the ground up, creates structure where none exists, and drives measurable outcomes without waiting for permission.
• Operates effectively at multiple altitudes, from board-level strategic conversation to team-level execution decisions.
• Direct, transparent communication style. Concrete over abstract. Results over activity, with proven ability to attract and retain top engineering talent in competitive markets
• Resilience and composure under regulatory and cyber-security pressure
• Comfort with ambiguity - ability to create structures where none exists
• Fluent in English.
• Based in Romania, with a high degree of availability for hybrid, multi-location work. Frequent on-site presence across team locations is expected, particularly during the integration phase.