Head of Group Engineering

**Join our team as the Head of Global Engineering & Architecture**

The Head of Engineering & Architecture is an exciting role in Group Data and Technology. We are focussed on becoming a technology and data-led risk knowledge company with a passion to deliver today and enable the future and this role sits at centre of achieving this

You will be innovative, intellectually curious, able to conceptualize new solutions for the business, and possess a skill set that blends the core attributes of business technology leadership with technical/engineering leadership. Although you will possess a high-degree of creativity, your ability to deliver outcomes and results in a fast-paced, large-scale environment is critical to success. Can you partner strongly across our organisation influence and challenge thinking to get us to the right outcomes?

Do you have the executive presence and communication skills to lead teams, partner with other technology and business leaders to lead & manage Swiss Re resources & assets under management? Can you lead a sizable team to drive success? If this is you, we want to hear from you

The location for the role is Zurich.

**About Swiss Re Digital and technology**

Swiss Re's business has always been about creating knowledge from data - long before the market was talking about AI or digitalisation. Over the decades, Swiss Re moved from simple datasets (e.g. age as a data element for life insurance policies in the 40s) to an environment where historical data on paper is replaced with real-time or predictive data. During the 2000s, as the technological environment evolved at pace, various departments across Swiss Re took to solving problems in isolation and found solutions with the help of tech or data. In some cases the solutions were shared and in others a fragmented approach was applied. This led to duplications, inefficiencies and taking too long for market impact. Over the past two years, much work has been done in laying a common data foundation, moving to the cloud, and reimagining how the Group works (agile & devsecops). All with the aim to create business impact. Today, digitalisation has become a prerequisite for future competitiveness.

Tech and data play a crucial role in Swiss Re's future. They provide the foundation of Swiss Re’s strategic priorities (underwriting excellence, services and solutions, standardised, data-driven business) and will enable all businesses to increase efficiency and grow profitably.

**About the role**:
As a Group-wide function, GDTO is a partner to (and enabler of) the business and a connector for One Swiss Re. The focus is on the client first. It is now more agile in adapting tech and has significantly increased data maturity. It delivers platform stability, an excellent digital workplace, and has great people and resources behind the organization. But there are also some roadblocks, e.g. some parts of how it delivers IT has become fragmented and sometimes it is still too far away from the business. The function needs to increase transparency on how what it does creates business value. Building on the work already done, it strives to maximise commercial impact, and take action to address the roadblocks to succeed in the future.

Working towards that vision, the GDTO will evolve in four areas:

- Evolve the tech and data foundation
- Upskill its people and bring talent onboard
- Utilise the tech and data foundation to enable business effectiveness
- Enable long-term growth through innovation.

The role will collaborate with multiple dimensions with particular engagement across the CSO, the Security and governance team; Business Unit Tech Leads for Corso, IptiQ and Reinsurance, Infrastructure and Applications as well as the Group functions of Swiss Re Institute and Asset Management IT.

**Main responsibilities**:

- De-duplicate functionality, capabilities and services across the landscape
- Simplify the vendor landscape working with Procurement
- Establish a cycle of continuously commoditizing capabilities and shifting to more economic models
- Establishing 'continental' engineering hubs for talent attraction, development and retention
- Balancing people strategy with low-cost and high-cost location strategy
- Creating a lean engineering culture of innovation, quality, discipline and speed

**Shape and drive the architectural vision & implementation and drive efficiency through standardization and continuous improvement**:

- Engineering practices, processes, metrics and tooling.
- Continue the rollout of DevSecOps principles, practices, tools and behaviours
- Line management of engineering resources

**About you**:
**Can you demonstrate**:

- Deep and broad technology experience with a strong architecture and Engineering base.
- Experience of financial services strong preference for insurance / reinsurance but if not then financial markets buy side or sell side and how that drives technology agenda
- Understanding of risks (insurance or finan