VP, Software Engineering (API & Integration Platform)

Job Description
THE ROLE
We are looking for a VP of Engineering to lead our API & Integration Platform organization — a mission-critical function responsible for enterprise API management, event-driven integration, secure data interfaces, managed file transfer, and high-volume orchestration capabilities.
This is a transformational leadership role. You will modernize a large, complex platform estate, drive our shift to cloud-native and API-first architecture, and lead the organization's evolution into an AI-first engineering function — where AI agents are designed into the platform as first-class participants, and our engineers work at a fundamentally higher level of leverage through agentic tooling and automation.
The role reports to the SVP of Platform Engineering (CEO → CTO → SVP → this role) and carries significant organizational scope and executive visibility.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
Platform Strategy & Roadmap
▸ Own the multi-year strategy and roadmap for enterprise APIs, event-driven integration, data interfaces, managed file transfer, and orchestration, with security, reliability, reuse, compliance, and AI-readiness as first-order design constraints.
▸ Drive modernization from legacy systems to cloud-native, event-driven, API-first architectures — maintaining operational continuity for mission-critical financial services.
▸ Champion platform-as-a-product: treat internal teams as customers, invest in developer experience, and build toward self-service and agentic interfaces.
AI-First & Agentic Transformation
Own the mandate to transform this organization into an AI-first engineering function. This is a foundational shift — not incremental adoption.
▸ Define agentic-readiness across the platform: machine-consumable API contracts, governed machine-to-machine access patterns, semantic discovery, and event-driven agent triggers.
▸ Evolve APIM to support agentic consumption: OpenAPI/MCP-compatible tool schemas, semantic API discovery, and AI-readable contracts.
▸ Reimagine batch and event platforms with AI-driven scheduling, self-healing pipelines, and anomaly-triggered workflows.
▸ Establish governance for AI agent interactions with financial-grade systems: trust boundaries, audit trails, and compliance controls.
▸ Drive AI-assisted engineering across the organization — coding tools, automated test generation, AI-powered incident diagnosis — and build the workforce capability to sustain it.
▸ Define and track AI adoption metrics (productivity, MTTR, autonomous resolution rates); report progress to SVP and CTO.
Engineering Execution
▸ Own end-to-end delivery across the API and integration portfolio: design, build, operate, secure, and continuously improve enterprise capabilities at scale.
▸ Implement SRE practices — SLOs, error budgets, blameless incident culture — with AI-assisted observability and incident response.
▸ Ensure platforms meet PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and relevant regulatory requirements by design, in partnership with Architecture, Security, and Risk.
People & Organization
▸ Lead a large, globally distributed engineering organization spanning API platform, event streaming, data interfaces, file transfer, and orchestration, with multiple layers of managers and senior technical leaders.
▸ Build a culture of technical excellence, AI fluency, and high accountability — attracting and retaining top talent.
▸ Develop your leadership layer; create clear career pathways and succession depth across platform disciplines.
Stakeholder & Executive Partnership
▸ Serve as the senior engineering voice for platform capabilities — partnering with Product, Risk, Compliance, Architecture, and Business leadership.
▸ Communicate portfolio health, AI transformation progress, and strategic risks clearly to SVP and CTO.
▸ Lead platform assessment and integration work for M&A activity.
Platform Domain Ownership
▸ API Management: Own the enterprise API gateway, developer portal, API catalog, lifecycle governance, analytics, and security posture; treat APIs as products and evolve them for human and agentic consumption.
▸ Event-Driven Integration: Own the enterprise event-streaming backbone enabling real-time data flows, decoupled architectures, reusable event products, and governed agent-triggered workflows.
▸ Managed File Transfer: Provide secure, resilient, and auditable exchange of financial data with clients, partners, and regulators.
▸ Orchestration: Modernize high-volume scheduled and event-triggered processing through intelligent scheduling, automated recovery, policy-driven controls, and self-service capabilities.
WHAT YOU WILL BRING
Experience
▸ 15+ years in engineering leadership, with 5+ years at VP scope leading large, multi-team organizations in fintech or financial services.
▸ Proven track record modernizing enterprise platforms at scale while maintaining operational continuity in a regulated environment.
▸ Deep domain experience across enterprise API management, API product strategy, developer ecosystems, event streaming, secure data interfaces, managed file transfer, or workload orchestration.
▸ Demonstrated leadership of AI transformation initiatives — AI-assisted development adoption, agentic automation, or LLM-powered platform capabilities.
▸ M&A technical due diligence and integration experience preferred.
Technical Knowledge
▸ Cloud-native architecture: microservices, event-driven design, API-first, Kubernetes/Docker.
▸ Enterprise API management platforms such as Apigee, Kong, MuleSoft, AWS API Gateway, or equivalent, plus modern API protocols and specifications including REST, GraphQL, gRPC, OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and MCP-compatible tool schemas.
▸ API lifecycle governance, specification-driven development, versioning and deprecation, zero-trust service access, threat protection, rate limiting, auditability, and regulatory controls.
▸ Event streaming and integration technologies such as Kafka, Confluent, EventBridge, IBM MQ, managed file transfer solutions, and enterprise schedulers such as Control-M or AutoSys.
▸ SRE fundamentals: observability, SLO/SLA management, AI-assisted incident response.
▸ AI/agentic systems: LLM APIs, agent frameworks, RAG patterns, and AI coding tooling (Copilot, Cursor, or equivalent).
Leadership
▸ Executive presence: able to translate complex technical strategy into business outcomes at the C-suite level.
▸ People-first leadership with a track record of building high-performing, AI-fluent engineering cultures.
▸ Data-driven: comfortable with OKRs, platform health metrics, and AI adoption scorecards.
HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED — FIRST 18 MONTHS
▸ Platform strategy and AI transformation roadmap ratified by SVP and CTO within 90 days.
▸ Agent-ready API contracts, semantic discovery, governed machine access, and event-driven triggers live in production across priority use cases.
▸ AI-assisted development tooling deployed org-wide with baseline productivity and quality metrics established.
▸ Measurable SLO improvement and MTTR reduction, with AI-assisted incident response operational.
▸ Two or more modernization initiatives showing demonstrable progress — reduced legacy footprint or expanded cloud-native capability.
▸ Leadership layer stabilized with succession depth and AI fluency embedded across senior roles.
WHY THIS ROLE
▸ A genuine mandate to lead one of the most consequential AI transformations in enterprise platform engineering — fully resourced, fully supported.
▸ Direct line to SVP Platform Engineering and CTO; high visibility into company-wide technology strategy.
▸ Frontier problem space: designing secure, discoverable, and reusable interfaces that connect financial products, partners, data, and AI agents at enterprise scale.
▸ Authority and budget to modernize and reimagine — not just operate and maintain.
▸ Real impact: the platforms you lead underpin financial transactions and customer experiences for millions of people.
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EEOC Statement
FIS is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, genetic information, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other protected characteristics. The EEO is the Law poster is available here supplement document available here