AVP, Asia Technology Strategy and Engineering

General Description: GWAM Asia Technology develops and supports technology solutions for the Global Wealth & Asset Management (GWAM) business in Asia across asset management, wealth, retirement, operations, and shared technology services. The team works closely with Global WAM, Asia Segment, Enterprise Technology, Data, Risk, Security, Operations, and market technology teams to support business growth, operational resilience, technology modernisation, and effective day-to-day technology support across the region. The AVP, Asia Technology Strategy, AI Transformation and Engineering is responsible for translating business priorities and global technology direction into an actionable Asia technology strategy, transformation roadmap, and set of shared regional capabilities. The role serves as the primary Asia partner to Global GWAM Technology Strategy and Architecture leadership, with particular focus on AI-enabled transformation, technology productivity, engineering effectiveness, strategic investment choices, and adoption of global technology capabilities in Asia. The position leads a small regional team and has direct accountability for designated Asia common technology services, shared engineering capabilities, reusable components, developer enablement, and selected regional technology platforms. The role will progressively consolidate appropriate common services and engineering capabilities that can be managed more effectively at an Asia level, while maintaining clear accountability between regional, market, global, and operations teams. The incumbent also provides pragmatic architecture and engineering leadership across GWAM Asia. This includes chairing the Local Architecture Review Board, strengthening engineering practices, promoting secure and responsible adoption of AI, and helping major initiatives make balanced decisions across value, cost, speed, resilience, risk, and long-term maintainability. Success requires a hands-on technology leader who can move between strategy and execution, build and lead a high-impact team, influence senior stakeholders without relying solely on formal authority, and convert emerging technology into measurable improvements in business and technology productivity. Key Accountabilities: 1. Technology Strategy and Global Partnership • Own and maintain the integrated Asia technology strategy, connecting business priorities, global direction, market requirements, architecture evolution, engineering capabilities and common services. • Serve as the primary Asia partner to Global GWAM Technology Strategy and Architecture leadership, representing Asia requirements and jointly advancing global and regional transformation priorities. • Translate global strategies and capabilities into executable Asia adoption plans, with defined ownership, sequencing, dependencies, funding requirements, and measurable outcomes. • Establish a regular strategy-management cadence covering strategic themes, investment options, roadmap progress, dependencies, risks, and changing business conditions. 2. AI Transformation and Technology Productivity • Lead the Asia technology AI-transformation agenda, including AI-assisted engineering, workflow transformation, agent-based solutions, and responsible adoption of enterprise AI capabilities. • Define measurable productivity outcomes covering delivery speed, automation, engineering quality, reuse, platform simplification, operational efficiency, developer experience, and technology cost. • Identify and prioritize AI and automation opportunities with clear business cases, accountable owners, production-readiness criteria, and value-realization measures. • Partner with data, risk, security, legal, compliance, and global AI teams to ensure responsible AI controls are embedded without creating unnecessary delivery friction. 3. Common Services and Engineering • Lead designated Asia common technology services and shared engineering capabilities, with clear service ownership, roadmaps, operating measures, support models, and continuous-improvement plans. • Identify capabilities that should be provided once for Asia rather than duplicated across markets, while preserving appropriate local accountability for regulatory or market-specific needs. • Develop reusable components, engineering patterns, APIs, automation, and developer-enablement capabilities that improve consistency, resilience, and delivery speed across Asia. • Strengthen engineering practices in DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure coding, production readiness, and technical-debt management. • Work with market and operations technology leaders to define clear boundaries between regional common services, market delivery, and day-to-day production support. 4. Architecture and Governance • Provide pragmatic regional architecture leadership and chair the Local Architecture Review Board, ensuring reviews are timely, proportionate, risk-aware, and focused on enabling delivery. • Maintain the Asia target architecture and architecture roadmap as an integral part of the Asia technology strategy. • Encourage reuse of enterprise and global capabilities, reduce unnecessary duplication, and manage material architecture risks and exceptions. • Advise major programs on technology choices, sequencing, integration, scalability, resilience, security, and maintainability. 5. Team and Stakeholder Leadership • Lead, develop, and retain a small, high-impact regional team covering strategy, AI transformation, architecture and engineering enablement, and designated common services. • Set clear objectives, decision rights, service expectations, and outcome measures for the team. • Act as a trusted adviser to Asia business and technology leaders on strategy, AI transformation, engineering investment, platform choices, delivery feasibility, and technology trade-offs. • Build communities of practice and federated working relationships across market engineers, ar