Hive Lead

This job is with Standard Chartered Bank, an inclusive employer and a member of myGwork – the largest global platform for the LGBTQ+ business community. Please do not contact the recruiter directly.Job Summary• The Hive Lead is a senior strategic leadership role responsible for defining, evolving, and executing the platform vision across multiple applications and squads. This individual ensures the platform acts as an accelerator for diverse product teams, balancing technical excellence with business outcomes. • Collaborating with Domain Tech Leads, Engineering Leads, Architects, and leading a team of Product Owners, the Hive Lead guides a culture of agility, empowerment, and continuous innovation. This person champions long-term stability, user-focused design, and value-driven roadmaps-while embedding regulatory and risk considerations as natural aspects of the development process. The role also requires close adherence to the Enterprise Software Delivery Lifecycle (ESDLC), referencing relevant PO R&R documents and aligning with Clarity, Azure DevOps (ADO), and Confluence for planning and governance. Key ResponsibilitiesStrategy • Shape and Communicate Platform Vision • Establish a multi-year strategic roadmap, blending market insights, business needs, and technical innovation to position the platform for future success. • Evangelise this roadmap with domain and squad leaders, ensuring wide alignment and clear understanding of why, how and when the platform will evolve. • Align with Enterprise Objectives • Ensure platform initiatives directly support major WRB outcomes and domain-level OKRs. • Champion a data-driven approach to prioritisation, incorporating both functional milestones and non-functional imperatives (e.g., security, scalability, performance). • Set Balanced Strategic Priorities & KPIs • Drive adoption of measurable metrics (e.g., developer adoption, cost savings, time-to-market improvements) to improve the platform's success. • Proactively integrate technical debt reduction and compliance items into these priorities, balancing new feature delivery with foundational stability. • Promote Scalability & Sustainable Growth • Collaborate with Domain Tech Leads and Architects to embed performance, reliability, and risk controls at the architecture level. • Manage trade-offs between rapid feature deployment and the long-term viability of the platform ecosystem. Business • Champion Stakeholder Needs • Continuously advocate for Journeys/Platforms and other Hive stakeholders, translating their feedback into the unified backlog for the Hive. • Build transparent relationships with Journeys to ensure each domain's objectives are reflected in the platform's evolution. • Unified Backlog Ownership • Maintain a single backlog that captures stream aligned journey roadmaps, business-driven features, technical enablers, and compliance/risk work.• Balance urgent demands against strategic investments, reflecting the right mix of short-term wins and long-term capabilities. • Value-Driven Delivery & Communication • Provide real-time visibility into backlog status, upcoming releases, and risk items through lifecycle tools like Clarity, Azure DevOps (ADO), and Confluence. • Host regular reviews showcasing platform increments (e.g., new integrations, improved APIs), inviting cross-domain feedback to refine direction. • Foster Cross-Domain and Cross-Hive Synergy • Identify reusable platform capabilities that reduce duplication and accelerate outcomes across multiple hives. • Collaborate with domain owners to avoid siloed development and ensure a consistent user experience where platform services are leveraged. Processes • Adopt & Embed eSDLC (Enterprise Software Delivery Lifecycle) Standards • Ensure all platform lifecycles (e.g., ideation → dev → test → deploy → monitor) align with ESDLC and organisational governance frameworks. • Reference the eSDLC PO R&R document where appropriate, reinforcing best practices for backlog management, quality gates, and audit readiness. • Champion Big Room Planning & Directional Scrums • Lead and actively participate in quarterly and directional planning sessions, enabling squads, chapters, and domain stakeholders to align on objectives. • Encourage open dialogue, autonomy, and continuous improvement, using these forums to address dependencies and realign priorities swiftly. • DevOps & Continuous Process Optimisation • Drive adoption of DevOps practices (CI/CD pipelines, automated testing), ensuring fast, reliable releases with minimal manual overhead. • Collect feedback from squads, domain leads, and external partners, feeding into retrospective loops and iterative improvements. • Regulatory & Security Integration • Embed secure-by-design, privacy-by-design principles from the earliest phases of solutioning collaborating with Architects. • Maintain audit trails and compliance documentation, minimising rework or bureaucratic bottlenecks while staying fully audit ready. People & Talent • Lead & Empower Squads • Nurture a psychologically safe environment, empowering squads to self-organise, innovate, and experiment with new approaches-within strategic guardrails. • Provide squads with clarity on how their work contributes to the platform's long-term goals, promoting autonomy and accountability. • Chapter Collaboration & Capability Building • Work with Chapter Leads (Engineering, Architecture, QA, etc.) to align skill development with platform needs, ensuring squads are well-equipped to handle complexity. • Advocate continuous learning, offering workshops or training on modern platform tech (e.g., APIs, cloud infrastructure, security frameworks). • Mentor & Coach Product Owners • Offer frameworks, feedback, and career guidance to Product Owners, ensuring consistent backlog practices and alignment with the platform vision. • Encourage user-centric thinking and data-informed decisions, bridging any gaps between technical squads and business stakeholders. • Agile Mindset & Team Culture • Reward collaboration, transparency, and constructive debate, dissuading micromanagement or command-and-control behaviours. • Cultivate communities of practice where domain experts, squad members, and chapter leads exchange best practices and lessons learned. Risk Management • Integrated Risk Oversight • Continuously incorporate operational, security, and regulatory risk items into the backlog. • Proactively escalate major risks (e.g. compliance blockers, infrastructure vulnerabilities) to domain leads, ensuring swift mitigation. • Technical Debt & Legacy Transformation • Emphasise regular refactoring, legacy system modernisation, and architectural upgrades that keep the platform robust over time. • Prevent "feature factory" mindsets by consistently valuing behind-the-scenes improvements that enable future velocity • Cross-Domain Impediment Resolution • Identify and clear systemic blockers (e.g., environment constraints, resource bottlenecks) that hinder squads across multiple domains. • Coordinate with Domain Tech Leads and Engineering Leads to address critical performance or architectural issues, maintaining platform stability. • Regulatory Adherence & Audit Readiness • Keep the platform fully audit-ready, with clear documentation mapping backlog items to compliance requirements (e.g., privacy, data residency). • Collaborate with risk/compliance officers to stay abreast of evolving regulations, proactively adjusting the platform roadmap. Governance • Enterprise Governance Alignment • Guarantee platform deliverables satisfy corporate policies (e.g., Group Plans, ESDLC gating) without imposing excessive bureaucracy on squads. • Ensure platform-level artefacts, from architecture decisions to user stories, meet governance needs with minimal friction. • Steering Committee & Forum Representation • Advocate for the platform in RF, QPR, or other governance bodies, linking platform metrics/deliverables to strategic business outcomes. • Use data to highlight successes, risks, or resource requirements for upcoming platform increments. • Release & Version Management • Oversee a structured release cadence, ensuring each major update meets performance, security, and quality benchmarks. • Continuous Assurance & Compliance • Maintain transparent records (design docs, test outcomes, retrospectives) that satisfy internal/external audits. • Treat governance as a built-in aspect of daily development rather than a final checkpoint, aligning with agile and DevOps principles. Regulatory & Business Conduct • Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group's Values and Code of Conduct. • Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct. • Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters. Key stakeholders • Investment Advisors, Team Heads, Relationship Managers, (PvB and Retail) • Global WM Product Teams • Global and Country Technology teams • Product Owners across Digital and Client Journey • Country WM Product Heads • Group, Regional and Country WM COO team QualificationsExtensive Platform Leadership •Demonstrable track record of building and delivering platform capabilities and scaling shared platform capabilities. •Extensive experience in designing and delivering capabilities using microservices, developing APIs, integration patterns and collaborating with other teams to reuse same capabilities across the platforms. •Advocate of built once and reuse multiple times. •Adept at balancing immediate project deliveries against long term strategy •Deep familiarity with agile product management at scale, having guided squads across various technical, compliance, and stakeholder landscapes. Strategic & Business Acumen •Proven ability to translate strategic objectives into actionable roadmaps and measure outcomes (e.g., developer adoption, domain synergy). •Skilled at influencing and negotiating with senior executives, domain sponsors, and cross-functional teams, underpinned by strong storytelling and data-led insights. Balanced Technical Literacy •Comfortable making decisions in collaboration with Domain Tech Leads, Engineering Leads, and Architects-understanding architecture, DevOps, and integration patterns. •Adept at risk-based prioritisation, appreciating both user-facing enhancements and underlying system reliability. •Experienced managing applications, various open-source technologies to develop, deliver and maintain business solutions Risk & Regulatory Understanding •Experience in complex regulatory environments (e.g. finance, healthcare), seamlessly embedding compliance into platform backlogs. •Track record of fostering an environment where security, resilience, and privacy are treated as integral to the platform's value. People-First Leadership •Exceptional collaboration skills: able to empower squads, champion psychological safety, and encourage open dialogue. •History of mentoring product owners and building cross-domain communities of practice, leading with trust instead of micromanagement. Domain Knowledge • Experience managing platforms, developing capabilities in banking technology with strong understanding of Private Bank, Wealth, and Derivative products. Skills and Experience• Understanding Customer Needs • WM Products and Processes • Data Architecture • Business Process Improvement • Agile Project Management About Standard CharteredWe're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us. Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion. Together we: Do the right thingand are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do Never settle,continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well Are better together,we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term What we offerIn line with our Fair Pay Charter,we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing. Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance,with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations. Time-offincluding annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum. Flexible workingoptions based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns. Proactive wellbeing supportthrough Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits A continuous learning cultureto support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning. Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation,one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.