The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a large, globally systemic financial institution holds a critical leadership position, responsible for defining, driving, and executing the technology vision and strategy that underpins the institution's operations, innovation, and competitiveness in the global financial market. This executive-level role demands a blend of deep technical expertise, strategic foresight, business acumen, and exceptional leadership skills to navigate the complexities of financial technology, regulatory compliance, cybersecurity, and global operations. The CTO reports to the Global Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Based in Boston and reporting directly to State Street's Chief Information Officer, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is a global role leading the enterprise infrastructure, architecture, cloud, artificial intelligence, and application development teams for State Street Global Technology Services (GTS). The CTO will be a key member of the GTS Executive team and will be responsible for providing the direction and delivery of all information technology systems supporting the company's operations on a global basis. The CTO is responsible for developing and implementing an enterprise wide technology strategy, vision, and road map that aligns with the company's systems and business needs.
State Street's new CTO will be responsible for overseeing a budget of $800 million and a global team of nearly 1,000 employees and an additional 5,000 contract and vendor resources to produce best-in-industry processes and technology solutions critical to the company's success. Additionally, they will ensure the technology 'brand' of the company is elevated by proactively building relationships across the company, collaborate effective, and develop a strong team to anticipate and meet the technology demands of the enterprise. This role will be a critical executive and technology expert facing State Street's Board of Directs, key regulators, clients, and other critical external and internal stakeholders.
State Street is a technology-driven scale provider and one of the largest and most complex transaction processors in the world, and this leader will play the key role in ensuring that the firm runs one of the most available, resilient, reliable, and scalable infrastructure environments in the world in a cost effective, efficient manner. As State Street's technology needs evolve over time, with flexibility, efficiency, and speed requirements continually increasing, this individual must bring a strategic vision and take a long-term approach to decision making in order to ensure that the firm's infrastructure footprint continues to evolve along with these needs. This leader must understand how to continually and incrementally enhance State Street's infrastructure environment, all the while maintaining a focus and discipline with respect to performance and cost.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES- Technology Strategy & Vision: Defining and implementing the overall technology strategy aligned with the State Street business goals and objectives, while staying ahead of technological trends and identifying opportunities to leverage new technologies for competitive advantage.
- Infrastructure & Operations Management: Overseeing the robust, secure, and scalable IT infrastructure, encompassing data centers, networks, applications, and cloud computing strategies, ensuring system reliability, performance, and efficiency.
- Digital Transformation: Leading the digital transformation initiatives, including the integration of digital technologies like AI, machine learning, and blockchain into banking processes and products to enhance customer experience, operational efficiency, and innovation.
- Cybersecurity & Risk Management: Implementing and managing security protocols, conducting regular risk assessments, and safeguarding the institution's assets and customer data from cyber threats and data breaches, while balancing innovation with security requirements.
- Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring adherence to stringent regulations, such as GDPR and Payment Services Directive Two (PSD2), implementing robust compliance frameworks, conducting technology audits, and collaborating with legal and compliance teams to navigate complex legal landscapes.
- Innovation & Research: Leading research and development efforts to explore and integrate emerging technologies, identifying opportunities to enhance products, services, and operational efficiency.
- Team Leadership & Talent Management: Leading and mentoring technology teams, including developers, engineers, and IT professionals, fostering an inclusive and innovative work culture, ensuring skill development, and attracting and retaining top technology talent.
- Stakeholder Management: Collaborating closely with other C-suite executives, including the CEO, CFO, and COO, to align technology strategies with overall business objectives and communicate the value of technology investments to internal and external stakeholders.
- Budget & Resource Management: Overseeing and managing technology budgets and resources, optimizing spending, and ensuring technology investments align with business priorities and yield maximum value.
- Provide strategic direction to and oversight over State Street's enterprise architecture, cloud, artificial intelligence, and technology infrastructure teams.
- Be a strategic thought partner to State Street's CIO, ensuring the right balance between prioritizing scaling the team and cost as well as between growing in-house versus external capabilities.
- Publicly identify needed changes or directions that need adjustment, challenge assumptions and norms about "the way things are done."
- Cultivate, drive, and inspire a high-performing, engineering-empowered and quality-minded culture and technical operations teams.
- Effectively align resources to achieve key business priorities, including appropriate scope, and high quality / timely product releases.
- Implement best practice coding and testing methodologies and tools.
- Lead and recruit talent to scale what is a geographically dispersed team while being a champion for the greater engineering organization.
- Take quick action as it relates to converting new ideas into final product with a collaborative mindset as you partner with product, design, quality, and operations.
- Invest in building a scalable infrastructure for operational efficiencies and a quality, end user focused mindset.
- Constantly evaluate technological advancements and innovative solutions to drive continuous product improvement.
- Collaborate and partner closely with business units and other functions across State Street to help solve complex technical problems using innovative technologies, methods, and approaches.
- Serve as a technical advisor to senior management and face off to State Street's Board of Directors, key regulators, clients, and other external stakeholders in a compelling manner.
DESIRED OUTCOMES- Improve and ensure on an ongoing basis the availability, resiliency, reliability, and scalability of State Street's infrastructure environment that requires 24x7x365 up-time.
- Develop a medium- and long-term infrastructure strategy in line with the company's future needs while balancing performance and cost.
- Keep abreast of industry trends and developments in technology infrastructure; serve as a change agent to State Street in incorporating these learnings into the company's environment.
- Manage State Street's technology infrastructure budget, setting and meeting financial plans.
- The ideal candidate is a seasoned technology infrastructure leader with a proven track record of delivering highly available, resilient, reliable, and scalable infrastructure platforms in support of highly complex, global, regulated businesses. This executive brings a strategic mindset and a long-term approach to decision-making in hand with a deep technical acumen to lead the infrastructure team supporting one of the most complex, high transaction volume computing environments in the world. With experience that spans both large scale, legacy environments (including mainframe experience) and modern, leading edge infrastructure capabilities, this leader understands how to lead change in an environment that cannot ever compromise performance. As one of the key technology leaders within State Street, this individual is a strong people leader, and is comfortable managing a team of 6,000 full-time employees and vendor resources around the world.
IDEAL EXPERIENCE- Experience: 10+ years of progressive technology exposure in financial technology, banking systems, or payment solutions, with proven leadership experience in senior technology roles like CTO or VP of Engineering.
- Technical Skills: Deep expertise in various technology domains, such as application architecture, software-defined infrastructure, cloud enablement, and technical transformation, particularly relevant to the financial services industry. Experience with specific technologies like Java, Python, RESTful API development, cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines, Agentic AI, autonomous code generation platforms.
- Strategic Thinking & Business Acumen: Strong strategic thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to align technology with business strategy, anticipate future technology trends, and make informed decisions on technology investments.
- Leadership & Management: Demonstrated ability to lead, motivate, and manage large, diverse, and high-performing technology teams in a highly matrixed environment.
- Communication & Interpersonal Skills: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to effectively communicate with executives, internal teams, vendors, and regulators, translating complex technical information into clear, actionable insights.
- Regulatory Acumen & Compliance: Strong knowledge of regulatory requirements and best practices in data security, privacy, and financial services regulations (e.g., GDPR, PSD2, HIPAA).
Education: A bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field is typically required, with a master's degree or relevant certifications often preferred.
Salary Range: $300,000 - $412,500 Annual
The range quoted above applies to the role in the primary location specified. If the candidate would ultimately work outside of the primary location above, the applicable range could differ.
Job Application Disclosure: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.
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