Global Head of Technology and Architecture

**Job Family**: IT Architecture

**Who We Are**

Transamerica has been helping people feel better about the future for more than 100 years. We provide investment, retirement, and life insurance solutions to more than 11 million customers throughout the U.S. But the way we see it, our responsibility goes beyond our clients’ accounts. We’re in the business of helping people live well and empowering them to create a better tomorrow through the financial and health-related habits they form today. We help people prepare by providing solutions that consider the whole picture.

**What We Do**

Transamerica is organized by lines of business (Life Insurance, Annuities, Mutual Funds, Retirement Plans, Employee Benefits, and Financial Assets), which are supported by Transamerica Corporate (Corporate Development; Finance; Internal Audit; Legislative, Regulatory & Policy; Office of the CEO; People, Places & Brand; Risk; and Technology).

Aegon Global is looking for a **Global Head of Technology and Architecture** who will play a pivotal role in the continued success and growth of Global Technology. The role reports directly into the **Global Chief Technology Officer** and is principally responsible for the following areas:

- ** Global Technology Strategy Alignment**: Ensure that there is a clearly aligned and funded Technology Strategy and Roadmap for all global capabilities across Aegon including opportunities for further expansion.
- ** Global Design Governance**: Responsible for all elements of the global architecture and key design decisions. Ensuring that architectures for Data, Cloud, Security, Integrations, SaaS, Packaged and DIY technologies are modelled and documented to a consistent high standard.
- ** Technology Leadership**: Provide technology leadership and advisory across Global Technology Services and the Aegon Business Units. Create an open and collaborative technology working culture to Aegon Global and the broader technology communities.
- ** Global Alignment and Innovation**: Lead Aegon’s global architecture community. This involves creation of Global Strategies to drive efficiency and re-use as well as leading on Global initiatives and contributing back to the Aegon technology community. Working closely with the business strategy team, vendors, and internal technology teams to facilitate innovation to solve real business problems.
- ** Enterprise Platforms**: Responsible for platforms that support shared processes and functions along with Enterprise Tooling solutions.

**Key Activities**:

- Ensure that the technology architecture and technical strategies remain current and in line with company business goals and wider market technology developments
- Thoroughly understand Aegon global direction, goals, and the competitive environment, and determine how architecture choices can add value to the organization
- Making expert recommendations and decisions clearly linked to the organization’s strategic and financial goals
- Develop overall reference architectures, as well as critical investment planning in strategic platform technologies and services for Aegon.
- Develop and maintain an aspirational architectural road map for the enterprise, maintaining current and planned architectural blueprints
- Design and oversee implementation of end-to-end integrated systems, key sign off for “big ticket” initiatives
- Communicating architectural decisions, plans, goals, and strategies, highlighting short-term trade-offs vs long-term commitments
- Providing thought leadership and advice to architects, technical leads, and software engineers across Aegon globally
- Make recommendations for business process improvements for functional teams and unblock organizational impediments to enable frictionless software engineering processes
- Ensure effective tool chains take the pain out of development, testing, build and deployment - automated wherever possible this to include automated risk and compliance checking
- Ensuring, and embodying, the principles of agility, devsecops, and agility-at-scale at the organizational level - promoting the evolution of working practices, operating models, and ways of working
- Ensuring that portfolio selection considers technical issues, shaping it in line with architecture and in turn using business priorities to shape architectural choices
- Lead proof-of-concepts with prototypes for emerging business scenarios and technology trends similar but not limited to Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and blockchain
- Provide recommendations on Security, cost, performance, reliability, and operational excellence
- Mentoring and grooming other members within the organization to help succeed in their careers
- Accountable for financial responsibility for the functions budget including budget planning, financial reporting, and forecasting.

**Skills Required**:

- Highly experienced technology leader with a very strong understanding of technology, architecture, systems design