Enterprise Cloud and Portfolio Transformation Director — Regulated Market Infrastructure

The mandate

A European market-infrastructure operator has approved a cloud strategy but has not converted it into a portfolio that respects the very different failure consequences of market data, clearing, collateral, settlement and corporate services. Business cases count migration milestones while omitting duplicated run cost, provider-exit work and the engineering needed to retire legacy platforms. A supervisory review has also challenged whether critical-service mapping, concentration analysis and recovery evidence are strong enough for the next investment tranche. The group is creating a permanent director seat to join architecture, economics, delivery and operational resilience under one accountable technology leader.

The director will lead an enduring portfolio of roughly €185 million and approximately 245 employees and strategic partners across Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Dublin and Warsaw. The remit covers AWS and retained infrastructure, cloud foundations, workload disposition, programme governance, FinOps, service transition, third-party oversight and the technology evidence supporting regulated operational resilience. Product heads continue to own clearing and settlement propositions, while service executives retain daily production accountability; this role decides how transformation capacity and architecture choices move those services toward a supportable destination.

During the first year, every critical workload must have a board-approved retain, retire, remediate or migrate decision with total-cost, concentration, exit and recovery implications. Two bounded but operationally significant services must complete AWS migration and independent resilience testing; duplicated infrastructure spend should fall by at least 10% on a like-for-like basis; and 95% of supervisory or audit commitments due in the period must close with accepted evidence. Portfolio forecast variance must remain within 6%, while at least three low-value programmes are stopped or materially narrowed and their people and funding visibly redeployed to critical-service outcomes.

The appointee may approve reference architectures, establish engineering and evidence gates, stop a migration or production release, settle portfolio sequence and shift up to €12 million within the approved annual envelope. Material outsourcing, entry into a new cloud region, acceptance of regulatory or critical-service risk, workforce reductions above the agreed plan and commitments beyond board-approved investment require the accountable committee. The director owns the quality of recommendations and execution evidence, but may not mark a second-line finding closed, alter market-service risk tolerance or sign a provider agreement reserved to procurement and regulated-entity boards.

This appointment remains accountable after the first migrations and must leave no divide between a temporary cloud programme and permanent service ownership. It will develop platform leaders, embed economic and resilience measures into annual planning, and govern renewal as technology and regulations change. Trading strategy, clearing membership policy, treasury collateral decisions and market-rule design are outside scope; the director must understand their service implications without appropriating their authority. The board is looking for controlled simplification, not an indiscriminate cloud-volume target.

Why this seat is open

Cloud architecture, infrastructure operations and transformation governance currently report through separate executives, so no one owns the combined destination, economics and control case. The supervisory review turned that design weakness into a board issue just as several programmes sought renewed funding. A permanent seat is being added before capital is committed, giving the CTO a leader who can make cross-portfolio choices and remain accountable for the resulting operating estate.

What you will own

• Convert cloud ambition into a workload-by-workload decision portfolio covering service criticality, technical suitability, total economics, data boundaries, concentration, recovery and provider exit.
• Reconcile the €185 million change book to engineering capacity and production dependencies, stopping or narrowing initiatives whose benefits cannot survive full run-cost and control analysis.
• Establish architecture, cyber, resilience, data, operational-readiness and financial gates that determine whether a migration may enter build, receive production approval or claim completion.
• Direct the first two operationally significant AWS migrations through cutover, reconciliation, stressed recovery and post-implementation evidence without weakening market-service obligations.
• Build a FinOps and legacy-retirement mechanism that attributes dual-running cost, contracted cloud commitments, environment usage and stranded infrastructure to accountable portfolio decisions.
• Present board and supervisory evidence that joins critical-service mapping, scenario tests, incident learning, supplier dependencies, data lineage and realistic exit execution.
• Create a leadership and succession system across cloud engineering, infrastructure, portfolio delivery and service transition that reduces dependence on integrators for core judgement.

Candidate qualifications

• Led a cloud and technology portfolio exceeding €100 million or US$120 million in banking, payments, exchanges, clearing, utilities or another tightly regulated critical-service environment.
• Migrated material workloads to AWS while retaining executive accountability for live service, cyber controls, data location, recovery testing, supplier concentration and exit readiness.
• Integrated dispersed programme reporting into a portfolio model that linked regulatory priority, customer or market outcome, engineering capacity, run cost and residual risk.
• Delivered large platform consolidation or code-base rationalisation across several countries and can quantify reliability, cost, release-speed and control outcomes after cutover.
• Presented transformation and regulatory-change evidence directly to boards, supervisors or independent assurance teams, including a decision to pause activity whose status appeared green.
• Directed multi-country teams and programmes above 200 person-years, with demonstrated succession building across architecture, engineering, programme management and production operations.

Non-negotiables

• Will work from Amsterdam at least three days each week and travel to Frankfurt, Dublin and Warsaw for finite architecture, resilience and leadership reviews.
• Has personally authorised or stopped a regulated cloud migration and remained accountable through production stabilisation and independent control testing.
• Can evidence portfolio financial authority above €100 million; ownership limited to technical architecture or programme reporting does not qualify.
• Will disclose all cloud-provider, systems-integrator, exchange, bank, market-data and investment interests before participating in supplier or portfolio decisions.

1. 49 words maximum. State the largest regulated technology portfolio you controlled, its annual value, team footprint and the decisions you could make without committee approval.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe an AWS migration you paused, redesigned or reversed. Which control or resilience evidence changed the decision?
3. 49 words maximum. How did you prove that cloud migration removed total operating cost rather than adding permanent dual-running expense?