Vice President, Network Architect/ Architect/ Principal Architect - APAC Core Technology Infrastructure

Job description

Job Description: At Bank of America, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better through the power of every connection. We do this by driving Responsible Growth and delivering for our clients, teammates, communities and shareholders every day. Being a Great Place to Work and providing a culture of caring is core to how we drive Responsible Growth. We are intentional about fostering an inclusive workplace where every teammate has the opportunity to succeed, build a career and contribute to our shared success. This includes attracting and developing exceptional talent, recognizing and rewarding performance, and supporting our teammates’ physical, emotional, and financial wellness through affordable, competitive and flexible benefits. We value the unique perspectives individuals bring from all backgrounds and career paths - whether shaped by military service, community college education, or a wide range of work and life experiences. These journeys foster resilience, leadership and innovation, strengthening our workforce and positively impact the communities we serve. Bank of America is committed to an in-office culture that supports collaboration, engagement, and career development. Our approach includes clear in-office expectations, while providing an appropriate level of flexibility based on role-specific responsibilities and business needs. At Bank of America, you can build a successful career with opportunities to learn, grow, and make an impact. Join us! Job Description: The Architect / Principal Architect for APAC, based in Singapore, will define and govern regional network architecture for highly regulated, operationally constrained and strategically important geographies. The role will act as the architecture authority for Asia-Pacific regional network patterns, balancing enterprise standards, security and automation objectives with country-specific regulatory expectations, data residency considerations, latency constraints, service availability, local market requirements and constrained infrastructure footprints. The role is part of an enduring Network Architecture function focused on modern, automated and security-first infrastructure. It will partner across network engineering, cyber security, regional technology leadership, application teams, cloud/SaaS architecture, operations and governance functions to ensure architectures are executable, supportable, resilient and aligned to enterprise strategy. Responsibilities: Regional architecture strategy: define and drive architecture strategy for complex and constrained geographies, ensuring regional solutions align with global network standards while meeting local regulatory, resiliency, latency and operational requirements. Complex geography design authority: serve as the senior technical authority for network designs in Singapore and other Asia-Pacific markets where regulatory, data residency, market access or infrastructure constraints require tailored architecture decisions. Security-first regional design: embed secure-by-design principles across regional connectivity, segmentation, internet ingress/egress, partner connectivity, remote access, branch, data centre and cloud connectivity patterns. Regulatory and control alignment: partner with risk, compliance, cyber security and governance teams to translate regional regulatory expectations and internal control requirements into practical architecture guardrails and design patterns. Resiliency and availability: architect high-availability regional network patterns that address local carrier diversity, constrained sites, market-specific failure scenarios, disaster recovery requirements and operational continuity expectations. Hybrid and cloud connectivity: define secure and scalable connectivity patterns across on-premise, public cloud, SaaS, regional hubs, transit networks and private connectivity models, with clear segmentation and traffic control principles. Simplification and modernisation: identify opportunities to reduce bespoke regional designs, rationalise legacy patterns, improve standardisation and accelerate adoption of automated, software-defined and policy-driven network services. Architecture governance: develop reference architectures, decision records, guardrails and reusable patterns that can be reviewed through architecture forums and adopted consistently by engineering and delivery teams. Cross-functional delivery enablement: work with engineering, operations, application, platform, security, vendor and regional leadership teams to ensure architecture is deliverable, operationally supportable and aligned to business outcomes. Mentorship and technical leadership: guide engineers and architects on regional architecture trade-offs, secure-by-design thinking, regulatory-aware design and sustainable operational models. Required Skills: Experience & Background 10+ years of progressive infrastructure, network, security or platform engineering experience, with 5+ years in architecture or senior technical leadership roles. Demonstrated experience designing enterprise-scale network architectures for large, highly available, globally distributed and regulated environments. Proven experience operating in Asia-Pacific or similarly complex regional environments where regulatory expectations, data residency, market access, latency, carrier availability or constrained infrastructure footprints influence architecture choices. Strong background partnering with regional technology leadership, engineering, cyber security, operations, application teams and governance/risk/compliance functions. Experience translating enterprise standards into practical regional designs without creating unnecessary bespoke patterns or long-term operational complexity. Regional / Complex Geography Architecture Expertise Deep understanding of regional network architecture patterns, including regional hub design, market connectivity, campus/branch integration, data centre connectivity, cloud access and secure internet ingress/egress. Experience with constrained-footprint architectures where space, power, carrier availability, operational coverage or local market constraints shape technical decisions. Strong understanding of resiliency patterns for critical regional services, including multi-carrier design, path diversity, active/active or active/passive models, failover validation and disaster recovery alignment. Ability to balance global standardisation with necessary local exceptions through clear decision records, risk acceptance paths and architecture governance. Experience supporting financial services, banking, capital markets, payments, trading, risk, regulatory or similarly critical platforms is strongly preferred. Network, Security & Platform Expertise Strong knowledge of enterprise routing, switching, segmentation, firewalling, load balancing, DNS, IPAM, remote access, partner connectivity and internet edge patterns. Experience with secure connectivity models across on-premise, public cloud and SaaS platforms, including private connectivity, transit hubs, cloud network segmentation and zero trust-aligned access principles. Understanding of perimeter, DMZ, cloud edge, branch, campus, data centre and global core network architecture domains, with the ability to align regional patterns across these disciplines. Practical knowledge of logging, telemetry, observability, operational readiness and incident response requirements for regulated environments. Awareness of automation and infrastructure-as-code concepts, including how standards, templates, APIs and orchestration pipelines can improve consistency and control in regional deployments. Security, Risk & Governance Extensive experience embedding security-by-design, least privilege, defence-in-depth and segmentation principles into regional network architectures. Ability to partner effectively with cyber security, risk, compliance, legal and audit stakeholders to align regional designs with control expectations. Experience documenting architecture decisions, exceptions, risk trade-offs, operating assumptions and control implications for architecture review boards or equivalent governance forums. Strong understanding of operational control environments, change management, incident/problem management and audit evidence expectations in large enterprises. Leadership Competencies Acts as a trusted regional architecture authority and advisor to senior engineering, operations, security and technology leadership. Influences across organisational boundaries and geographies, aligning global strategy with regional execution realities. Communicates complex architecture trade-offs in clear business-relevant language for senior stakeholders. Constructively challenges designs that create unnecessary regional complexity, long-term operational risk or divergence from enterprise standards. Builds consensus across central architecture teams, regional teams and delivery organisations while maintaining clear architecture principles and guardrails. Mentors architects and engineers on regulatory-aware architecture, regional design trade-offs and sustainable operating models. Desired Skills: Advanced Regional / Financial Institution Experience Direct experience supporting network architecture in Asia-Pacific or other complex financial markets. Experience with country-specific regulatory expectations, local outsourcing or technology risk management requirements, and data residency or cross-border connectivity considerations. Experience supporting critical banking, payments, trading, market connectivity, branch, corporate centre or regulatory platforms. Understanding of third-party connectivity, market data, exchange connectivity, partner access, extranet and B2B patterns in regulated environments. Modernisation & Target-State Architecture Experience modernising legacy regional network patterns toward software-defined, policy-driven and automated platforms. Ability to define migration paths that reduce bespoke country-specific complexity while protecting availability, regulatory alignment and business continuity. Experience integrating regional networks with cloud edge, secure access service edge, zero trust network access, SD-WAN, private cloud connectivity or modern segmentation platforms. Experience developing “paved road” regional onboarding models that simplify adoption for applications and business platforms. Automation, Observability & Operational Readiness Experience defining architecture requirements for automated provisioning, configuration standards, compliance validation and policy lifecycle management. Strong understanding of operational telemetry, service health, traffic baselining, capacity planning and regional resilience testing. Familiarity with SRE concepts, service-level objectives, error budgets and operational maturity models. Experience creating architecture handoffs, operational readiness criteria, runbooks and support models for regional services. Technical Skills Regional and global network architecture, including routing, switching, segmentation, internet edge, private connectivity and resilient WAN patterns. Perimeter, DMZ and secure ingress/egress design, including firewall policy architecture, NAT, WAF, proxy, API gateway and DDoS protection concepts. Hybrid cloud and SaaS connectivity, including AWS, Azure and/or GCP networking, private endpoints, transit hubs, cloud firewalls and cloud-to-campus/data-centre integration. Branch, campus, data centre and global core alignment, with an ability to ensure end-to-end architecture coherence across domains. Security architecture principles including zero trust-aligned segmentation, least privilege, identity-aware access, TLS/PKI and control evidence requirements. Architecture documentation, reference patterns, standards, decision records, design reviews and executive-level technical communication. Automation awareness across infrastructure-as-code, APIs, templates, orchestration pipelines and compliance-as-code concepts. Tools / Technologies Network platforms: Cisco, Arista, or equivalent enterprise routing/switching platforms. Security and edge platforms: Palo Alto, Fortinet, Check Point, Cisco, F5, Akamai, Cloudflare, or equivalent. Cloud networking: AWS, Azure and/or GCP networking and security services, transit hubs, private connectivity and cloud firewall capabilities. Automation and standards: Terraform, Ansible, Python, APIs, CI/CD pipelines, configuration templates and policy validation tooling. Observability and operations: Splunk, ThousandEyes, packet/flow telemetry, SIEM integrations or equivalent monitoring platforms. Education, Certifications, etc. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Security/network certifications preferred, such as CISSP, CCSP, CCNP/CCIE Enterprise or Security, PCNSE, JNCIE/JNCIP, GIAC or equivalent. Cloud networking or security certifications preferred, such as AWS Advanced Networking/Security, Azure Network Engineer/Security Engineer, or Google Cloud networking/security credentials. Architecture certifications or formal architecture training preferred, such as TOGAF, SAFe Architecture or equivalent enterprise architecture experience.