Associate Director, Product Owner # AI

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading bank is seeking an Associate Director, Capability Lead within its IT department in London. This role involves overseeing system delivery, managing Agile practices, and ensuring alignment with strategic goals. The ideal candidate will possess strong leadership and problem-solving skills, complemented by an Agile practitioner certification. This leadership position offers opportunities to work with cross-functional teams and contribute to the modernization of IT services.

Qualifications

• Experience managing business systems, SaaS, and managed services.
• Strong Agile leadership skills.
• Excellent communication in complex, multi-national environments.

Responsibilities

• Oversee system delivery, service design, and SLA management.
• Lead third-party contributions within Agile frameworks.
• Coach and mentor teams to promote quality and Agile practices.

Skills

Leadership judgment

Problem-solving

Communication

Agile practices

Political awareness

Education

Agile practitioner certification (e.g., PMI-ACP)

Job description

Requisition ID 34795

Office Country: United Kingdom

Office City: London

Division: Information Technology

Contract Type: Fixed Term

Contract Length: 3 years

Purpose of Job

The Associate Director, Capability Lead, is a key leadership role responsible for overseeing a capability domain within the IT department. The role involves working closely with the AD, Product Owner to ensure delivery aligns with the vision, strategy, roadmap, and budget.

The AD manages the system delivery lifecycle, including system introduction, delivery, maintenance, and continuous improvement. Responsibilities include service design, transition, support, maintenance, SLA management, reporting, and stakeholder engagement. The role operates in an agile, flat, self-organising environment with product-aligned squads or scrums. The AD ensures delivery aligns with the product vision and technical strategy, enabling teams to meet priorities.

Depending on scale, the AD may have Principals reporting directly and peer ADs in a matrixed structure to support complex, scaled agile delivery.

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• System Delivery: Responsible for support, maintenance, and development of systems within the capability area. Lead development, maintenance, and support, working with peers to establish best practices using Agile methodologies (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban) and design practices (TDD, CI/CD, Microservices, DevOps). Drive transformation towards a metrics-based, lean startup approach, defining success criteria, managing backlogs, planning, and ensuring SLAs are met. Collaborate with QA to ensure quality and integrity of support and development. Manage demand, backlog, and stakeholder reporting.
• IT Standards, Risk, Control & Governance: Contribute to IT policies and standards, ensure adherence, manage risks via IT risk frameworks, and improve controls through automation.
• Third Party Management: Lead teams in a hybrid staff/outsourced model, coordinating third-party contributions within Agile frameworks.
• Financial Monitoring & Continuous Improvement: Manage budgets, identify modernization opportunities, implement automation, report progress, and foster a culture of eliminating technical debt.
• People Management: Coach and mentor teams, promote quality and Agile practices, support Product Owners, and manage staff engagement, recruitment, performance, and development.

The role requires broad experience across support, maintenance, and development of business systems, including bespoke applications, SaaS, and managed services, with strong Agile leadership skills. Domain knowledge will be provided by Principal practitioners within each sub-team. Capability areas include Client Services, Data & Analytics, Modern Networks & Infrastructure.

Knowledge, Skills, Experience & Qualifications

Education and Qualifications

• Artificial Intelligence capabilities, including bespoke AI (Generative, Machine Learning) and commodity AI.

• Strong leadership judgment, solution-oriented problem-solving, and experience managing people, finances, processes, and systems.
• Ability to influence and collaborate across departments, with political awareness and diplomatic skills.
• Excellent communication skills in English, with experience working in complex, multi-national, Agile environments.
• Agile practitioner certification (e.g., PMI-ACP or equivalent).

Other skills include planning, monitoring, controlling support and development, coaching teams, and creating community within IT and business stakeholders.

Note: Internal applicants must have passed probation; external applicants via the external website. Due to high application volume, detailed feedback to non-shortlisted candidates is not provided.