Applications Support Group Manager - Senior Vice President - Citi - #2085139

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Job Overview

The Global Financial Messaging / Payments Technology SVP (C14) is a senior Application Manager is responsible for end-to-end ownership of Global Financial Messaging (GFM) / Payments applications within the Production Support and Services organization. This role combines strategic leadership, deep technical expertise, and operational excellence to ensure high availability, resiliency, and performance of mission-critical, franchise payment platforms.

The role operates at a global level, driving stability, modernization, and transformation initiatives while partnering with business, product, and engineering teams. The SVP acts as a delegate to global leadership and is accountable for delivering best-in-class production support services and continuous improvement across the payments ecosystem

Key Responsibilities :

1. Strategic & Regional Leadership

• Define and execute the strategy for GFM / Payments Production Support, aligned with global payments technology objectives
• Build and lead high-performing global teams, including onshore, offshore, and vendor resources
• Act as a senior escalation point and decision-maker for critical production and business-impacting issues
• Partner with senior business stakeholders to align technology services with enterprise priorities

2. Production Support & Operational Excellence

• Ensure 24x7 stability and availability of Global Financial Messaging and Payments applications
• Oversee incident, problem, and change management processes aligned with ITIL best practices
• Drive improvements in: Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)
• Incident reduction and root cause elimination
• Service level adherence and operational KPIs
• Lead release management and production deployments, ensuring minimal business disruption

3. Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across: Observability (monitoring, logging, tracing)
• Automation and self-healing capabilities
• Resiliency, disaster recovery, and failover strategies
• Champion modern engineering practices including: Infrastructure-as-Code
• CI/CD pipelines
• Automation and scripting (Python, Shell, etc.)
• Guide teams on application stability, scalability, and performance optimization

4. Architecture & Platform Governance

• Collaborate with architecture and engineering teams to embed: Supportability standards
• Resilient system design principles
• Define onboarding standards and governance for new applications into production
• Influence platform modernization across messaging and payment systems

5. Stakeholder & Business Engagement

• Engage with senior leadership, product partners, and clients to communicate: Platform health
• Operational risks
• Strategic initiatives
• Translate technical capabilities into business value, ensuring alignment with customer expectations
• Support audit, regulatory, and compliance engagements

6. Risk, Control & Compliance

• Ensure all activities adhere to Citi risk and control frameworks
• Proactively identify, escalate, and resolve operational and regulatory risks
• Maintain strong governance over: Change management, Production controls, Application lifecycle management

7. Financial & Vendor Management

• Manage budgets, resource planning, and cost optimization initiatives
• Drive efficiencies through: Automation, Process improvements, Vendor optimization
• Oversee third-party and managed service providers, ensuring SLA adherence

8. Talent & Organization Development

• Lead, coach, and develop diverse global teams
• Build strong succession pipelines and technical leadership bench strength
• Foster a culture of: Accountability, Continuous improvement, Operational excellence, Qualifications & Experience

Core Experience :

• Rxperience in Production Support / Payments Technology / Financial Messaging
• Proven leadership experience managing large global teams in mission-critical environments
• Strong domain expertise in: Payments systems (SWIFT, real-time payments, financial messaging)
• High-volume, low-latency transaction systems
• Technical Expertise
• Strong experience with: Distributed systems, middleware (MQ, Kafka), and APIs
• Databases (Oracle, MongoDB)
• Linux/Unix environments
• Hands-on knowledge of: Monitoring tools (AppDynamics, ELK, Geneos)
• CI/CD pipelines and automation tools
• Cloud/container platforms (OpenShift, Kubernetes - preferred)

Leadership & Behavioral Skills:

• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills across all levels
• Ability to operate under high-pressure, high-visibility environments
• Strong problem-solving, decision-making, and prioritization capability
• Strategic mindset with the ability to translate vision into execution

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required
• Master's degree preferred

Success Metrics:

• Application uptime and stability metrics
• Incident reduction and faster resolution times
• Successful delivery of production releases and transformations
• Improved operational efficiency and cost optimization
• Strong stakeholder and client satisfaction

Summary:

This role represents a high-impact leadership position within GFM / Payments Technology, combining:

• Deep technical expertise
• Global operational responsibility
• Strategic influence

What we'll provide you:

By joining Citi, you will not only be part of a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (up to 2 days working at home per week), but also receive a competitive base salary (which is annually reviewed), and enjoy a whole host of additional benefits such as:

• 27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• A discretional annual performance related bonus
• Private Medical Care & Life Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Pension Plan
• Paid Parental Leave
• Special discounts for employees, family, and friends
• Access to an array of learning and development resources

Alongside these benefits Citi is co