About FWD Group
FWD Group is a pan-Asian life and health insurance business that serves approximately 30 million customers across 10 markets, including BRI Life in Indonesia. FWD’s customer-led and tech-enabled approach aims to deliver innovative propositions, easy-to-understand products and a simpler insurance experience. Established in 2013, the company operates in some of the fastest-growing insurance markets in the world with a vision of changing the way people feel about insurance. FWD Group is listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited under the stock code 1828.
For more information, please visit www.fwd.com
PURPOSE
To lead, manage and guide industry leading software development execution of the designated digital platform(s) portfolio(s) collaboratively with respective Platform Owner Leaders, focusing on the following key business function areas:
1. Omne Native App
2. Consumer/Transformation Applications
3. Group Distribution Portfolios
To lead communication with C-level executives for business requirements and BU senior stakeholder along with PO(Platform Owners) to evaluate technical feasibility of digital platform delivery in consideration to FWD’s tech stack environment and latest technologies.
Lead and grow our digital platforms delivery capability, identify and promote best practices and establish common working frameworks that achieve continuous integration and continuous delivery (CICD) outcomes and implement reporting frameworks that provide monitoring and promote team wellbeing and performance
Provide technical guidance to the software engineering delivery teams and support the skillset growth of the digital delivery members
Provide thought leadership on technical solutions that are empathetic to customer-led outcomes to develop the next generation of digital platforms at FWD to disrupt the insurance sector.
To leverage Agile frameworks and supporting processes to strengthen the delivery culture and team ways of working
Responsible for driving the timely delivery of FWD’s web apps and native apps by working with multi-disciplinary teams including Developers, QA Engineers, Testers, Designers, Platform Managers (Product Managers), Technical Architects, Business/Product Owners, and Business Subject Matter Experts.
This role will have a sizeable impact due to the significance and scale of the digital platform development by the teams under management of this role, the impact of the deliverables will impact the entire organisation functions.
Wil be responsible for managing multiple development teams working on multi streams, multi countries for both maintenance and future growth initiatives key to the Polaris objectives.
The projects developed and managed by these teams will be such that their performance will severely affect other organisation functions’ performance and ability to achieve their objectives. I.e. FWD Omne, Digital Commerce team / Ecommerce, Group/Regional Distribution Digital industry leadership
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES
Responsible for technical leadership and development system delivery of Digital platforms
Responsible for the app solutions architecture and technical decisions related to the delivery and maintenance of a global platform and ecosystem supporting the Digital Platforms
Responsible for successful delivery or a global platform, solutions architecture that is scalable and reusable to ensure agile delivery outcomes, reduced platform technical operational costs, and reduced time to market for reused application features.
Responsible for the optimised orchestration between complex systems - ie. Omne Native App, Group IT Operational workflow, Group Data Platform services and API service layers related to the optimal performance, and scalability of the digital platform technical landscape
Responsible for managing multiple development teams within the role’s portfolio. Comprising of multi teams of development squads, quality engineering and release – synchronised to the Platform Owners requirements and delivery alignment.
Responsible for key technical decisions and solutions that will achieve fast and agile go-to-market delivery solutions for every new market and feature within the Complex digital platform that will depend on the ideal solutions architecture, development environments, supporting development tools, appropriate automation and team member management across multiple squad of developers.
Key contributor to the technology thought leadership on the management and synchronisation of multiple development teams within this role’s team structure, ensuring efficient release management covering the complex multi-system/multi country delivery expectations whilst maintain up-time to customers in real-time.
Accountable for the overall complex digital platform application code quality and the QA process to ensure low to zero bug leakages for the global platform roll outs for FWD across the multiple countries
Across the breadth of Digital portfolios for this role, this role will be accountable for the design, and maintenance of:
- Overall digital platform technical design covering the multiple complex systems involved , compliance, delivery and maintenance of the entire application techstackResponsible for the Integration architecture with multiple large scale systems (including OWB, Life Policy/Admin systems/GO Data Platform/third party integrations that is compliant and enabled to be efficiently deployed across multiple markets, including HK, KH, ID, MY, VN, JP, PH, SG in accordance with their country specific requirements and tech compliance needs
Engage and intimately involved in technical leadership decision-making and collaboration with other key Technology leaders within Group and country organisation, - including Group IT, CTOs, Group Digital, Platform Owners in relation to the digital platform technologies within their portfolio
Responsible for the vendor management, technical solutioning, delivery and ongoing integration integrity related to multiple third party engagements with vendors/partners providing technical solution
In-depth knowledge of how own organization function (Digital & Data) integrates within the business units of FWD Group, and of direct competitors (products/services). In addition to this, ensuring the optimal strategic directions of the technical solution to contribute to the commercial objectives of FWD business.
Accountable to maintain and comprehensive understanding of the multi facets and disciplines that underly the success of the Digital Platforms and systems being delivered. This will require an underlying understanding of business principles, related to the digital solutions, regulatory compliance, and data security compliance.
Maintenance and design of the best partner technical solutions architecture, integration solutions, IT security compliance and standards
Accountable for the Tech thought leadership and technical decisions on the merging and platform unification initiative for the NextGen Portfolios, ongoing growth and support/maintenance for NextGen experience backlogs
Develop and bring to life an engineering culture that guides, energises, and inspires our platform, design and digital delivery teams in their successful delivery of our ambitious roadmap agendas.
Deeply understand and contribute to our business and product strategies, while developing an engineering approach that best positions us to deliver those strategies.
Work closely with the other Digital Platform Portfolio leads, to manage and align with the preferred digital platform delivery approach
Build a compelling technology solutions architectural vision and be accountable for execution of the operational plans that build toward that vision.
Plan for future proofing through anticipation of the intersection of technology advancements, evolving customer preferences, and business outcomes to ensure our platforms are positioned for the future.
Demonstrate strong business acumen, alignment with business strategy, and be competent to make data driven decisions to support strong understanding and decisions.
Work well with team members and other teams, dividing up workload appropriately.
Drive digital delivery across multiple platform portfolios, as well as be part of the cross-functional team responsible to achieve digital platform(s) goals
Advocate for improvements in code and culture, and to support your colleagues in the same.
Lead, coach and mentor a team of engineers so that they grow in technical excellence as well as strategic and business thinking.
Support, build and present related technical topics as part of business case(s) for digital initiatives using industry trends, business needs and a scalable growth philosophy. This includes the analysis and assessment of existing platforms, competitor platforms/solutions, better use and improvements of current platforms/solutions, and/or introduction and implementation of completely new platforms or solutions.
Advocate an Agile software delivery approach to the approach of achieving solutions
Support the determination of the viability of new digital initiatives, identify the technical requirements, resource constraints, provide possible options/solutions to execute new ideas, and ensure a project is technically and operationally feasible as well as economically justifiable while mitigating risk
Lead the development and maintenance of all digital initiatives documentation and manage internal and external process methodologies to achieve the necessary artefacts
Establish detailed and realistic digital delivery scopes after identifying and validating both business and technical parameters
Assure quality in deliverables by closely managing project implementation, communicating efficiently with different parties, identifying project risks in advance, running comprehensive QA capability; and maintaining a clear set of project and technical documentation
Track budget and provide project status reports regularly or as required.
Manage and oversee the delivery of projects necessary to execute on the defined strategy and success criteria. This includes technology selection, project management (software timelines), implementation with other systems, end user adoption and application performance.
Define and implement metrics to measure platform technical progress against performance and business objectives.
Collaborate with other members of the digital leadership team to achieve unified outcomes
Optimise the technology delivery efficiencies by providing thought leadership on solution outcomes that optimise customer and business impact, and are aligned with strategic priorities, aligned with allocated budgets, and within team capacity. The role will be responsible for the management of the sizeable development and cost resources, policy formulating and planning of the digital delivery teams within this role’s portfolios. This will be done with the view to apply a significant positive influence over the future strategy of the digital platform technical contributions and business value impact.
QUALIFICATIONS / EXPERIENCE
Success in launching enterprise level technology solutions that are executed with technical proficiency, displaying quality of the technical performance, and on-time and aligned with internal team partners. (e.g. Platform Manager, UX/UI, Group EA, IT Security)
You are a strong software engineer and have good knowledge of what it means to work with large and/or distributed systems.
8-10+ years’ solid experience in leading digital application projects, with intimate hands-on experience in website and mobile application development with proven success is a must. Preferred languages (React, ReactNative, Java and the standard suite of front end web applications.
Expertise in Agile methodologies, processes, principles and ways of working (Scrum experience is required)
Thought leadership in leading and influencing the optimal platform architecture, that will guide the various scrum teams to a unified outcome for regional platforms.
Knowledge in digital analytics is preferred
PMP® or PRINCE2® or Agile certification is welcomed.
KNOWLEDGE & TECHNICAL SKILLS
Proven experience in Frontend development frameworks (e.g., Angular, Vue, React, ReactNative, NodeJS)
Hands-on knowledge of key testing frameworks and tools (i.e. Spring Boot. Java, Selenium, Cucumber)
Proven of experience in designing, building, refactoring and releasing native apps and web applications
Significant experience in design and development of Internet-scale systems with large volumes of data
Experience with solutions integrations and management of NoSQL DBs (Elasticsearch, Redis , MongoDB , etc.)
Proven experience working in agile environments and cross functional teams
Experience with Docker/Kubernetes
Proficient in Cloud technologies (AWS, Azure)
Proficient in API solutions and optimisation withing the solutions architecture for improved experiences
Integration/Solutions architect capabilities related to the applications responsible
Proficient in data analysis and applying insights into tangible outcomes that improve relevant technical and business performances
Able to lead native applications (iOS, Android, or hybrid) and develop it fully - preferred
Experience with TDD, pairing, code reviews, and other techniques to maintain high-quality code and resiliency.
Familiarity with Security, Accessibility, Site Speed optimization, Cross-browser /Cross-platform UX Design is desirable
Strong relationship management skills, particularly in building and communicating & delivering messages to senior leadership
Confident in working closely with senior leaders across both technical and business teams
Strong in large project management, vendor and stakeholder management
