SVP - Head of Product and Engineering

About the Role
The Product and Engineering Leader will lead Sunwest Bank’s product management and software delivery functions in the technology organization. The position owns product and software delivery portfolio visibility, builds and executes on product roadmaps, discovery, prioritization, requirements quality, launch readiness, and performance measurement across assigned digital, data, payments, operational, and internal platform initiatives. This leader will work with their management team to build highly accountable and delivery focused teams to drive the strategy and tactical delivery of Sunwest Bank’s external and internal customer software solutions.

In the first year, this leader will:
Publish a three-year technical roadmap, sequenced against business priorities, regulatory commitments, and actual delivery capacity, and defend it to executive leadership and the business partners.
Establish a predictable delivery cadence with measurable throughput, quality, and commitment reliability across the development organization.
Set the architecture and design standards for the Bank's software, including the integration patterns between custom applications, the core banking platform, and third-party systems.
Assess the organization structure, roles, and talent, and build the team that is required to deliver at the level the Bank needs.
Work Details
Schedule: Monday - Friday, 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM; additional hours may be required for releases, incidents, or critical initiatives
Work Location: Onsite   Hybrid   Remote
Travel: Occasional, up to 10%
What You’ll Do
Own the technical roadmap. Build and maintain a three-year roadmap for the Bank's software and data capabilities — what gets built, what gets bought, what gets retired, and in what order. Sequence it honestly against capacity, dependencies, regulatory deadlines, and the Bank's acquisition activity. Revisit it on a defined cadence and tell executive leadership when it changes and why.
Be accountable for delivery. Own throughput, quality, and predictability across the software organization. Establish engineering practices — branching and release strategy, testing, code review, CI/CD, observability, incident response, and technical debt management — and hold the organization to them. Report delivery performance in terms the business understands: what was committed, what shipped, what slipped and why.
Direct architecture and design. Set the architecture direction for the Bank's custom software in the absence of a dedicated architecture function: application and data architecture, integration patterns with the core banking platform and third-party vendors, API and event standards, cloud platform design, and security-by-design practices developed in partnership with Information Security. Personally review significant technical designs and make the calls that cross team boundaries.
Lead build-versus-buy with intellectual honesty. Evaluate where custom software creates durable advantage for the Bank and where a vendor product is the better answer. Own the technical diligence, total-cost analysis, integration assessment, and implementation plan for buy decisions, and the business case for build decisions.
Integrate product and engineering into one operating model. Unify discovery, prioritization, requirements quality, estimation, release planning, and post-launch measurement across the Product and Development functions, with clear roles and a single intake path for the business.
Lead the AI and data function. Direct the Bank's data platform and AI initiatives toward production outcomes rather than demonstrations, with appropriate model, data, and third-party governance.
Build the organization. Assess structure, roles, and talent against what the Bank needs. Hire, develop, and coach leaders; set performance expectations; address underperformance directly; and make the structural and personnel decisions required, including difficult ones.
Partner across the Bank. Work directly with Commercial Banking, Treasury Management, Operations, Payments, Finance, Risk, Compliance, BSA/AML, Information Security, Legal, and Audit to understand business problems, shape demand, set realistic expectations, and resolve competing priorities without escalating every decision.
Manage governance and risk as part of delivery. Ensure software moves through required risk, compliance, information security, model and data, legal, change management, and third-party governance reviews — built into the delivery process rather than bolted on at the end.
Own the numbers. Manage budget, vendor contracts, licensing, contractor spend, and capacity planning for the product and engineering organization, and contribute to the Bank's technology total cost of ownership picture.
Perform additional duties as assigned in support of the Bank's priorities.
What We’re Looking For
·       Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
·       12+ years in software engineering and delivery, including significant hands-on experience as a full-stack software developer earlier in your career. You have written and shipped production code, and you can still read a design document critically and tell whether it will hold up.
·       5+ years leading software organizations at a director level or above, including experience leading other leaders, managers or directors rather than only individual contributors.
·       Demonstrated ownership of a custom software portfolio delivered into production: you can point to specific systems you were accountable for, what they do, and what it took to ship them.
·       Deep expertise across the full stack, modern application frameworks, API and service design, data modeling and storage, cloud infrastructure (Azure preferred), and CI/CD and automated testing practices at a level that lets you set standards and evaluate technical decisions without delegating the judgment.
·       Experience leading architecture and design direction in the absence of a formal architecture function, including integration architecture across internal systems, platform vendors, and third-party services.
·       Proven record of building and restructuring engineering and product organizations: hiring, leveling, developing leaders, setting performance expectations, and making difficult personnel and structural decisions.
·       Experience partnering with or leading a product management function, and a clear point of view on how product and engineering should work together.
·       Demonstrated ability to build a multi-year technical roadmap, defend it to executive stakeholders, and deliver against it.
·       Strong build-versus-buy judgment, including vendor evaluation, technical diligence, and total-cost-of-ownership analysis.
·       Ability to work directly with non-technical business executives: translating constraints without condescension, setting expectations that hold, and saying no with a reason.
·       Excellent written and verbal communication, including executive-level reporting on delivery, risk, and spend.
Nice to Have
*.      Experience with commercial banking, treasury management, payments, lending, digital banking, core banking, CRM, data products, or internal workflow platforms.
·       Familiarity with core banking platforms and the integration patterns around them, commercial banking, treasury management, payments, or lending systems.
·       Experience delivering software through mergers, acquisitions, or system conversions.
·       Experience taking AI and machine learning capabilities from prototype into governed production use.
·       Experience establishing a cloud platform foundation — landing zones, governance, policy baselines, and platform engineering practices.
·       Experience operating in an environment without a mature DevOps or SRE function and building one.
·       Advanced degree or relevant technical certifications.
Why You’ll Love Working Here
·       Rare scope for a bank this size: one leader over product, engineering, and AI and data, reporting directly to the Chief Information Officer, with a seat at the table where technology strategy is set.
·       Real authority to design the organization, set the technical direction, and choose what the Bank builds, not a role that inherits someone else's architecture and roadmap.
·       A technology leadership team that is actively rebuilding how the Bank delivers, with executive support for doing it properly rather than quickly.
·       Direct access to business executives across the Bank, and visibility into strategy, acquisitions, and growth.
Compensation
Competitive compensation commensurate with experience, plus bonus opportunity and benefits.
Physical Demands
In general, the following physical demands are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to allow differently abled individuals to perform the essential functions of the job.
Sedentary: Limited activity, no lifting, limited walking
Moderate: Mostly standing, walking, bending, frequent lifting
Light: Office work, some lifting, bending, stooping or kneeling, walking
Arduous: Heavy lifting, bending, crawling, climbing
The Fine Print
This job description reflects the general nature of the role and may change as business needs evolve. We are an equal opportunity employer. Sunwest Bank works with staff members and customers without regard to race, ancestry, national origin, sex, marital status, age, religion, medical condition, handicap, disability or veteran status and to assist the Bank in maintaining its Affirmative Action Program.
Compliance with Bank Secrecy Act laws and regulations is considered an extremely serious matter, and it is intended that Sunwest Bank, through the purposeful efforts of its employees and officers, are expected to make every resolute attempt to conform to its Bank Secrecy Act Program and Procedures. Failure to comply will be reflected in their performance review as well as in any bonus compensation programs in which they may participate.
Attend and complete all required classroom, computer-based, web-based and seminar training. It is the individual responsibility of every employee to maintain a current awareness and understanding of and to fully comply with Sunwest Bank’s “Code of Ethics and Conduct.” Each employee is also expected to maintain an awareness of the laws, regulations, internal policies and procedures that are appropriate for his/her position.
Note: The preceding job description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level and work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. All job descriptions can be amended without notice as warranted by business necessity.
Federal Deposit Insurance Act: This position is subject to Section 19 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. As such, an employment offer for this position is contingent on Sunwest Bank’s review of criminal conviction history, including pretrial diversions or program entries.