Our Core Banking and Card Platforms sit at the heart of everything Investec does for our clients. Every payment made, every card transaction authorised and every account serviced depends on technology that is secure, resilient and built to last. The Core Banking & Card Lead is accountable for the strategic leadership, operational excellence, delivery oversight and commercial management of these platforms

This is a role for someone who enjoys holding three horizons at once. You will be accountable for running the Bank, keeping platforms stable, resilient and well controlled. You will be responsible for changing the Bank, delivering the capabilities that growth, regulation and new products demand. And you will shape the bank, setting a platform strategy and investment case that looks three to five years ahead. It is a genuinely senior seat: you will be the voice of these platforms, and the custodian of their architecture, integrity and long-term direction.

You will lead multidisciplinary teams spanning engineering, product, architecture, delivery and operations, and work in close partnership with Product, Operations, Risk, Compliance and Finance, as well as with platform consumers across Investec UK, Investec Channel Islands and Investec Bank Switzerland. Alongside them sit our card schemes, processors and strategic technology partners. If you enjoy balancing competing priorities without losing sight of the bigger picture, you will find plenty to get your teeth into here.

What will I be doing?

• Setting and maintaining a clear multi-year strategy for the Core Banking and Card Platforms, and acting as long-term custodian of their architecture, principles and domain boundaries.
• Protecting platform integrity as new products, services and jurisdictions adopt platform capabilities, making decisions through a lens of resilience, scalability, security and commercial value.
• Leading the delivery of the platform capabilities that support business growth, regulatory change and new product development, orchestrating safe, predictable delivery across multiple teams.
• Establishing the governance, prioritisation and risk controls that balance change demand against operational stability, ensuring technology and operational risks are identified and mitigated early.
• Owning platform health, resilience, availability and service performance, backed by strong operational controls, monitoring and incident management, and driving continuous improvement through operational metrics, root cause analysis and engineering excellence.
• Owning platform budgets, forecasting and investment decisions, managing strategic vendor and partner relationships, and building the business cases that show where expenditure delivers real value.
• Acting as the senior technology voice for Core Banking and Card Platform matters, influencing decisions and giving executive stakeholders clear assurance on performance, risks and trade-offs.
• Leading and growing multidisciplinary teams across engineering, product, architecture, delivery and operations, building leadership capability, succession and a culture of accountability and ownership.

What are we looking for?

Essential skills and experience

• Significant leadership experience within banking or financial services technology, gained on credit, banking, payments, card or core banking platforms.
• A proven track record of running complex, business-critical technology services in a highly regulated environment.
• Experience balancing operational stability with strategic transformation and business growth, and a strong record of leading organisational change and delivery programmes.
• Strong commercial awareness and financial management capability, including complex technology investment portfolios, budgets, cost management and strategic vendor and commercial partnerships.
• Strong strategic thinking and planning skills, with the confidence to make decisions on a three-to-five-year horizon while managing short-term business demands.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and influencing skills, including experience engaging Executive Committees and senior stakeholders.
• A proven track record of leading, developing and retaining high-performing teams, and of making sound decisions where priorities compete.
• A strong understanding of banking platform architecture, technology delivery, operational resilience, risk and governance, with the communication skills to make complex concepts clear to non-technical audiences at Executive and Board level.

Desirable skills and experience

• Experience across both retail or private banking and corporate transactional banking domains.
• Experience of modern cloud-native platform architectures.
• An understanding of core banking platforms, card processing platforms and payments ecosystems.
• Experience building platform operating models that serve multiple business consumers.
• Experience gained in a technology-led transformation environment.
• Familiarity with Mambu, Pismo, Visa and modern banking ecosystems.
• Experience leading geographically distributed teams.
• A strong grasp of emerging banking, payments and card industry trends.