Section Head (Digital Architecture)

About BDO

BDO Unibank, Inc. is the Philippines’ leading full-service bank, offering a wide range of financial and digital banking services. Guided by our brand promise “We Find Ways,” we are committed to delivering easy, reliable, and customer-focused services. Build your career with a trusted industry leader.

Job Summary

• Lead the Digital Architecture section responsible for defining, governing, and assuring end-to-end solution architecture across assigned retail digital front-end applications. The role ensures solutions are business-aligned, enterprise-architecture compliant, secure, scalable, resilient, operable, and cost-effective.


• Own solution architecture governance and design assurance for initiatives related to digital under Retail Channel Applications department from service definition through service build and service transition.


• Define transition roadmaps, reusable patterns, and architecture guardrails for digital banking, mobile/web channels and related front-end applications


• Provide executive-grade technology consulting, solution options, economic framing, risk assessment, and architecture decision support for senior IT and business stakeholders.


• Manage architecture escalations, design risks, technical dependencies, and vendor architecture deliverables


• Build internal architecture capability by coaching solution architects, standardizing methods and artifacts, and reducing avoidable dependency on vendor architects.

Key Responsibilities:

Accountability to ITG: 
• Take accountability for complete, reviewable, traceable solution architecture deliverables and work with ITG units to support seamless delivery from service definition through implementation decisioning.
• Ensure solutions comply with IT SDLC, governance, security, data, infrastructure, DevSecOps, production readiness, integration, resiliency, operational, and transition standards in partnership with relevant ITG teams.
• Lead architecture reviews, solution optioning, ARB submissions, decision reviews, and escalation of architecture issues with clear options, recommendations, risks, and decision points.
• Maintain reusable standards, patterns, templates, guardrails, documented architecture decisions, and decision records for the Retail Digital portfolio.
• Identify technical debt, duplicate capabilities, resiliency gaps, and non-standard implementations, then define remediation plans.

Accountability to Business: 

• Translate business strategy/scope/requirements into feasible, secure, scalable solutions while ensuring it aligns with BDO next-gen architecture and business outcomes.
• Assign the right architecture resources to support scope validation, requirements development, and delivery ownership.
• Manage business and PIP escalations, including unresolved design conflicts, cross-platform dependencies, and vendor solution gaps.
• Present solution options with trade-offs, costs, risks, controls, dependencies, and recommended decision paths.
• Support approval forums and executive discussions with architecture papers, decision decks, vendor assessments, and delivery-risk summaries

Accountability to Unit: 
• Own the quality of architecture delivery across the Retail Digital Banking portfolio.
• Support the planning and capacity management, staffing, allocation, and resource leverage across delivery teams and projects.
• Build team capability through competency standards, onboarding, training, mentoring, knowledge sharing, and performance reviews.
• Assign architecture leads based on domain complexity, risk, criticality, and required technology expertise.
• Act as escalation point for delivery leads and team members, ensuring timely issue resolution and risk management support.
• Oversee vendors and Sis to ensure architecture deliverables align with BDO target-state architecture, controls, standards, and operational requirements.
• Support production incident reviews where architecture intervention is needed for root cause, recurrence prevention, resiliency, security, or integration design

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, Information Systems, or other discipline relevant to technology delivery and architecture. Postgraduate degree or executive technology / management education is an advantage


• 15 or more years of technology delivery, solution architecture, enterprise application, or systems integration experience, preferably in financial services. 


• 10 or more years leading complex digital, online transaction, payments, lending, integration, or customer-channel initiatives. 


• 5 or more years managing architects, senior technical leads, delivery leads, vendors, and system integration partners.


• Must be willing to work onsite and be assigned in Ortigas

BDO Unibank, Inc. provides equal opportunity to all qualified candidates. Hiring decisions are based on job requirements and candidate qualifications, and shall not be influenced by any consideration of race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity),  national or ethnic origin, or disability.