Applications Support Group Manager - Senior Vice President

Overview

The Global Financial Messaging / Payments Technology SVP (C14) is a senior Application Manager 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 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 and 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, onboarding standards and governance for new applications into production, and 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, and 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 risk and control frameworks; proactively identify, escalate, and resolve operational and regulatory risks; maintain governance over change management, production controls, and application lifecycle management.

7. Financial & Vendor Management: Manage budgets, resource planning, and cost optimization initiatives; drive efficiencies through automation, process improvements, and vendor optimization; oversee third-party and managed service providers, ensuring SLA adherence.

8. Talent & Organization Development: Lead, coach, and develop diverse global teams; build succession pipelines and technical leadership bench strength; foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and operational excellence.

Core Experience

• Experience 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
• Strong technical expertise in 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, and strategic influence.

What we'll provide you

Joining Citi provides a business casual workplace with a hybrid working model (up to 2 days at home per week), along with a competitive base salary (annually reviewed) and a range of benefits:

• 27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• Discretionary 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 learning and development resources

All Citi employees are encouraged to bring their whole self to work, and Citi is an equal opportunity employer. Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities during the application process.

Job Family Group

Technology

Job Family

Applications Support

Time Type

Full time

Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.