VP, Network Solution Architect Lead - SMBC

Key Responsibilities

A. Architecture Leadership & Strategy

• Lead the APAC network solution-architecture practice and define the target-state architecture, principles, standards, and multi-year technology roadmap in alignment with enterprise direction.

• Translate business and technology strategies into practical network capabilities, transition architectures, investment priorities, and implementation sequencing.

• Act as the senior design authority for complex or high-risk network initiatives and provide clear technical recommendations, decisions, and escalation paths.

• Identify opportunities to simplify and standardise the network estate, reduce technical debt, improve resilience, and enable automation and operational efficiency.

B. Solution Design & Technical Assurance

• Lead requirements discovery and develop secure, resilient, scalable, and cost-effective network solutions for projects, programmes, application onboarding, site changes, cloud adoption, and technology refresh.

• Own or assure high-level designs, low-level design principles, architecture decision records, option assessments, bills of material, migration approaches, test strategies, and implementation guardrails.

• Ensure each solution addresses availability, capacity, performance, security, segmentation, manageability, observability, disaster recovery, lifecycle, and operational support requirements.

• Conduct design reviews, challenge assumptions and exceptions, resolve cross-domain dependencies, and provide formal technical approval or remediation conditions before implementation.

C. Network Domain Architecture

• Provide architecture leadership across routing and switching, data centre networking, campus and branch networks, WAN/SD-WAN, Internet gateways, wireless, remote access, DNS/DHCP/IPAM, and network management.

• Design integrated network-security solutions covering firewalls, segmentation, VPN, secure web access, network access control, privileged administration, logging, and policy enforcement.

• Define connectivity patterns for public cloud, private cloud, SaaS, partner, market, and third-party services, including routing, security, resilience, and traffic-flow requirements.

• Guide application delivery and traffic-management architecture, including load balancing, global traffic management, proxy services, certificate dependencies, and service health monitoring.

D. Governance, Standards & Compliance

• Establish and maintain reference architectures, approved design patterns, engineering standards, configuration principles, technology standards, and reusable architecture templates.

• Embed security-by-design, least privilege, defence in depth, segregation, auditability, and regulatory requirements into solution architecture and decision-making.

• Support risk assessments, exception requests, audit responses, control evidence, and remediation planning with clear technical rationale, ownership, compensating controls, and target-state direction.

• Ensure solutions comply with enterprise architecture, information security, change management, lifecycle, data handling, and applicable regional regulatory requirements.

E. Project Delivery, Implementation & Stakeholder Leadership

• Own and drive the network workstream across the full project lifecycle, from initiation, requirements, solution design, planning, and procurement through build, testing, migration, implementation, stabilisation, handover, and project closure.

• Develop and maintain the network delivery plan, key milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, implementation sequencing, acceptance criteria, and technical deliverables in coordination with project managers and workstream leads.

• Provide hands-on leadership during implementation, ensuring engineers and vendors execute the approved design, follow engineering standards, complete required evidence, and resolve technical issues without compromising security, resilience, or quality.

• Drive implementation readiness reviews, confirming prerequisites such as approved designs, hardware and licensing, circuit readiness, security approvals, change records, test plans, rollback procedures, support coverage, communications, and stakeholder sign-off.

• Coordinate build, configuration, integration, testing, migration, cutover, and validation activities across Network Operations, RNOC, Security, Infrastructure, Cloud, Applications, service providers, and business stakeholders.

• Track and communicate delivery status, technical risks, issues, decisions, dependencies, scope changes, and recovery actions; escalate material concerns early and drive accountable owners to closure.

• Ensure project changes comply with change-management requirements and that implementation outcomes are validated against design, performance, resilience, security, monitoring, and business acceptance criteria.

• Lead post-implementation validation and stabilisation, ensure defects and residual risks are documented and remediated, and confirm complete operational handover before project closure.

F. Commercial, Vendor & Technology Management

• Lead technical evaluation of products, services, proposals, and proofs of concept, ensuring that selections align with architecture standards, support strategy, security requirements, and total cost considerations.

• Work with procurement and vendors to validate solution scope, licensing, sizing, supportability, interoperability, lifecycle, delivery assumptions, and contractual technical commitments.

• Maintain awareness of industry developments and vendor roadmaps, assessing their relevance, maturity, risks, and potential value to the APAC network strategy.

• Prevent unnecessary vendor lock-in and solution sprawl by promoting open integration, reusable capability, standard platforms, and disciplined exception management.

G. Implementation Readiness & Operational Acceptance

• Define architecture acceptance criteria and ensure designs include monitoring, logging, capacity thresholds, backup, failover, support access, documentation, and recovery requirements.

• Assure implementation plans, migration methods, rollback strategies, test cases, failover tests, and operational handover deliverables for major or high-risk changes.

• Partner with Network Operations, RNOC, service management, and engineering teams to confirm support readiness, ownership, runbooks, training, spares, vendor support, and escalation arrangements.

• Use lessons from incidents, problems, changes, performance trends, and operational feedback to improve architecture standards and future solution designs.

H. Team Leadership & Capability Development

• Lead, mentor, and develop network solution architects and senior engineers, setting clear technical expectations and promoting consistent architecture and documentation quality.

• Chair or contribute to architecture and design-review forums, ensuring decisions are evidence-based, traceable, and aligned with agreed principles.

• Build reusable knowledge through design patterns, templates, decision records, lessons learned, and technical communities of practice across APAC.

• Promote a collaborative engineering culture that values simplification, automation, security, operational ownership, constructive challenge, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications & Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Telecommunications, or a related discipline.

• Minimum 10-15 years of experience in enterprise networking, including significant experience in network solution architecture, technical design authority, or architecture leadership roles.

• Demonstrable experience designing large-scale, highly available solutions across data centre, campus, branch, WAN/SD-WAN, Internet, cloud connectivity, wireless, and network security domains.

• Deep knowledge of routing and switching, BGP, OSPF, QoS, multicast, VPN, high availability, network segmentation, DNS/DHCP/IPAM, load balancing, and network access control.

• Strong experience with enterprise technologies such as Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, F5, Meraki, Zscaler, and Cisco ISE, or equivalent platforms.

• Experience integrating networks with public cloud, SaaS, identity, security, monitoring, ITSM, and automation platforms.

• Strong architecture-method, requirements-analysis, option-assessment, technical-governance, risk-management, and design-documentation capabilities.

• Working knowledge of automation, APIs, Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, observability, and Site Reliability Engineering principles is highly desirable.

• Proven ability to lead architects and senior engineers, influence cross-functional stakeholders, manage technical conflict, and communicate effectively with senior management.

• Experience in banking, financial services, or another regulated environment preferred; knowledge of MAS TRM and relevant regional regulations is advantageous.

• Practical knowledge of project governance, change control, implementation readiness, financial and commercial tracking, resource planning, and delivery reporting.

• Ability to manage technical delivery across internal engineering teams, service providers, vendors, project managers, and business stakeholders, with clear ownership of risks, issues, decisions, scope, quality, and delivery outcomes.

• Proven experience leading network project delivery and implementation across multiple countries or sites, including planning, dependency management, testing, migration, cutover, stabilisation, and operational handover.

• Preferred certifications include CCNP/CCIE or equivalent architecture certification, cloud-networking certification, vendor security certification, and ITIL.

• Excellent written and verbal English, with the ability to produce clear architecture documents, executive recommendations, technical standards, and governance decisions.