Chief Information Officer — Digital Bank

The mandate

A listed digital bank has paused expansion investment because its enterprise technology estate is expensive, brittle and poorly understood. Duplicate tools, ageing integrations and supplier dependency drive run cost, while incidents and cyber weaknesses consume change capacity. The investment committee wants an accountable CIO to renew the estate without destabilising daily banking.

The Chief Information Officer will steward technology supporting approximately ₹78,900 crore in loans and deposits and lead about 500 employees and material partners. The remit spans enterprise architecture, infrastructure, workplace, service, cyber hygiene, resilience, portfolio economics, suppliers and technology talent. Product engineering remains a close peer; the CIO owns the shared estate and operating environment.

The first step is an authoritative estate baseline: applications, users, service criticality, controls, lifecycle cost, contracts, dependencies and retirement feasibility. Business ownership and actual adoption should determine where investment lands. A replacement with no funded migration and decommissioning path merely adds cost.

Service stability and renewal must coexist. Changes should use client-impact, reconciliation, rollback and resilience gates. Technical debt will be described through operating consequences and economic choices rather than a single backlog number.

Cyber hygiene needs visible fundamentals: asset ownership, patching, privileged access, vulnerability response, logging and recovery. The CIO will ensure remediation becomes ordinary service management and independent risk keeps its challenge role.

Supplier economics should include concentration, data rights, knowledge transfer and exit. Several contracts may conceal one shared dependency. The future organisation must restore internal capability where outsourcing has weakened decision authority.

Technology finance will be rebuilt around services and lifecycle. Cloud consumption, licences, infrastructure, support and change should connect to business users and important services. The CIO will introduce showback where it improves decisions without encouraging shadow systems. Savings will be recognised only when contracts, assets and support effort cease. Renewal investment should identify depreciation, migration, dual-running and residual cost.

The organisation will adopt product and service ownership that persists beyond project delivery. Every important service needs a business sponsor, technical owner, reliability objective, support model and investment view. Portfolio governance will compare mandatory risk work, renewal and new functionality against one capacity baseline. Internal mobility between infrastructure, service and change teams should ensure operational knowledge informs design and transformation expertise remains after implementation.

Operational disciplines need strengthening alongside architecture. Incident command, problem management, configuration, change and capacity should use reliable data and clear service ownership. Recurring incidents must alter backlog and funding, not close after tactical repair. Recovery exercises will test data integrity and backlog clearance as well as technical availability. Technology leaders will be accountable for colleague capability and production health.

Why this seat is open

This urgent new role replaces distributed ownership during the cost reset. A six-to-eight-week appointment process is planned before further expansion decisions.

What you will own

• Establish one technology estate, cost, service and dependency baseline.
• Steward technology supporting the ₹78,900 crore loan and deposit book.
• Choose what to repair, replace, consolidate or retire.
• Protect service, data and recovery through controlled migration.
• Strengthen cyber hygiene and sustainable remediation.
• Reset supplier concentration, commercial terms and exit readiness.
• Lead 500 employees and partners with deeper internal capability.
• Give the board transparent technology economics and downside.

The first 12 months

In the first 90 days, reconcile assets, contracts, cost, incidents, vulnerabilities and change demand. Meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to renewal, including customers represented through service evidence, business leaders, engineers, risk and suppliers. Stabilise severe exposure, assess leaders and agree investment gates.

Months four to nine should settle target architecture, complete priority hygiene fixes and retire a bounded part of the estate. Fill leadership gaps and renegotiate material supplier obligations. The first value should appear in stability, cyber control, released run cost or capacity returned to priority change.

By year end, service stability, cyber hygiene and transparent technology economics should be repeatable. The annual case should finish within 10% of baseline while forecasts align investment, service, customer and workforce assumptions for three consecutive quarters. Priority technology matters need independent closure evidence, and no severe escalation should remain open beyond 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Availability, recovery and incident recurrence for important services.
• Cyber hygiene, vulnerability age and privileged-access control.
• Applications, licences, infrastructure and supplier cost retired.
• Investment linked to adoption and complete lifecycle economics.
• Keep regretted loss among essential technology talent below 10% and establish immediate cover across 70% of direct-report roles.
• Quantified cost-to-income improvement without service deterioration.

The person

You are a CIO, Enterprise Technology Leader or Infrastructure Executive with 18–22 years in regulated banking or a comparable digital service. You have renewed an estate while retaining production and cyber accountability.

Your accountable book, budget, portfolio or P&L has been at least ₹45,750 crore, and you have led 500 or more people. You can evidence sustained service, security and cost outcomes over two reporting periods.

You can challenge both local attachment and fashionable replacement, explain technology economics to the board and insist that retirement completes before savings are claimed.

Compensation and terms

Fixed compensation is ₹3.2–4.6 crore plus performance variable and LTI. The permanent Gurugram role is onsite and can accommodate notice up to six months.

Confidentiality

The bank, estate and cyber findings remain confidential until fit is established. Facts are composite.