VP, Application and Enterprise Architecture (L12)

Role Title: VP, Software Engineering Manager (L12)

COMPANY OVERVIEW: Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a premier consumer financial services company delivering one of the industry’s most complete digitally enabled product suites. Our experience, expertise and scale encompass a broad spectrum of industries including digital, health and wellness, retail, telecommunications, home, auto, outdoors, pet and more.

• We have recently been ranked #2 among India’s Best Companies to Work for by Great Place to Work. We were among the Top 50 India’s Best Workplaces in Building a Culture of Innovation by All by GPTW and Top 25 among Best Workplaces in BFSI by GPTW. We have also been recognized by AmbitionBox Employee Choice Awards among the Top 20 Mid-Sized Companies, ranked #3 among Top Rated Companies for Women, and Top-Rated Financial Services Companies.
• We provide best-in-class employee benefits and programs that cater to work-life integration and overall well-being.
• We provide career advancement and upskilling opportunities, focusing on Advancing Diverse Talent to take up leadership roles.

Organizational Overview:

This role sits within Synchrony’s Front-End Engineering organization, which builds and maintains the web applications that power digital experiences for over 60 million customers and hundreds of brand partners. Our teams are focused on delivering seamless, accessible, and high-performance user experiences at scale — from consumer-facing product interfaces to partner integration portals. As AI dissolves the traditional boundaries between front-end, back-end, and platform engineering, this organization is evolving beyond its front-end anchor. Engineers increasingly work fluidly across the full stack, leveraging AI-assisted development and agentic workflows to deliver end-to-end solutions. This leader will guide that evolution while keeping user experience excellence at the center of everything we build.

Role Summary/Purpose:

This is a People Manager role. We’re looking for a leader who blends deep technical expertise with a people-first approach to managing engineering teams. You’ll guide multiple engineering teams and technical leaders across the full stack, ensuring our talent is set up for success, our delivery is predictable and high-quality, and our engineering community continues to grow stronger together. While this role has a strong anchor in modern front-end technologies, it is no longer limited to front-end engineering alone. AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, and full-stack code generation mean your teams will increasingly move fluidly across layers of the stack. You will lead that shift — setting architectural direction, establishing AI-driven engineering standards as an integrated part of the Community of Practice, championing cross-stack thinking, and helping engineers become T-shaped contributors. You’ll act as a bridge between engineering, product, and design, removing friction, fostering innovation, and keeping teams aligned to both business priorities and best practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• People, Talent and Cross-Functional Collaboration: Ensure optimal staffing levels across front-end, back-end, full-stack, and platform specializations. Hire, coach, and develop top-tier engineering talent. Manage direct reports and technical leads, address performance issues promptly, and build strong relationships with Product, Design, Platform, Data, and agile train leadership to deliver cohesive, customer-focused solutions.
• Community of Practice, Developer Experience and AI-Driven Engineering: As AI tooling becomes inseparable from modern engineering practice, own the convergence of Community of Practice standards and AI adoption as a single discipline. Foster best practice adoption across the engineering community with AI tooling treated as a first-class part of the practice. Define standards for responsible AI adoption — including when to use AI coding assistants, agents, skills, and MCP integrations versus traditional approaches. Establish clear guidance on the distinction between AI Skills (deterministic capabilities) and Agents (autonomous, multi-step workflows). Evaluate, pilot, and roll out AI tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue.dev, Aider, Cline, Ollama). Define governance for AI use in regulated financial services contexts including data handling, PII protection, IP compliance, and code provenance. Track and measure the combined impact of CoP practices and AI adoption on cycle time, PR throughput, defect rates, and developer satisfaction.
• System Architecture and Technical Direction: Own a modern view of system architecture spanning client, server, data, integration, and AI layers. Champion patterns such as micro-frontends, BFF, event-driven, API-first, serverless, and composable architectures. Partner with Enterprise Architects on platform alignment. Guide trade-off decisions (monolith vs. microservices, sync vs. async, build vs. buy). Use AI-powered architecture tools to accelerate design exploration and generate ADRs. Ensure teams document decisions so both humans and AI agents can reason about the system. Understand how AI tools interact with system architecture — including RAG, vector databases, MCP integrations, and agentic workflows.
• Strategic Planning, Delivery and Operational Excellence: Ensure plans align with CoP goals, review quarterly commitments to flag risks early, and step in to resolve conflicts between product, design, and engineering. Drive CI/CD best practices, ensure high-quality scalable solutions across the stack, and provide on-call support during escalations. Support tech leads hands-on when needed, regardless of which layer of the stack the problem lives in.

Required Skills/Knowledge:

• Strong hands-on background in modern front-end technologies (ReactJS, TypeScript, NextJS, Cypress) as an anchor foundation, with working knowledge of back-end technologies, APIs, microservices, and data layer concepts. Experience with AWS cloud services, CI/CD pipelines, and modern DevOps practices. Proven ability to lead engineers working across the full stack.
• Solid grounding in system architecture fundamentals — distributed systems, scalability, CAP trade-offs, caching, messaging, API design — and familiarity with modern patterns (micro-frontends, BFF, event-driven, CQRS, serverless, composable architectures). Experience making and documenting architecture decisions (ADRs), with understanding of how AI-native architecture (RAG pipelines, vector databases, agent orchestration) differs from traditional architecture.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent) with clear understanding of the difference between AI Skills and Agents, familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol), RAG patterns, and experience defining AI usage guidelines and governance frameworks for regulated environments. Awareness of the open-source AI tooling ecosystem (Continue.dev, Aider, Cline, Ollama).
• Proven experience leading and growing high-performing engineering teams, running or contributing to a Community of Practice, and strong communication skills with the ability to influence across organizational levels.

Desired Skills/Knowledge:

• Experience operating within a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) environment with familiarity in PI Planning, ARTs, Value Streams, and WSJF prioritization.
• Experience building custom AI agents or workflows using LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Azure OpenAI) for engineering automation such as code review agents, documentation agents, or migration agents.
• Track record of defining and measuring AI productivity metrics (cycle time impact, PR throughput, defect rates, developer satisfaction) and translating those into actionable standards for engineering organizations.

Eligibility Criteria:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, plus 7+ years of experience in software development, design, and architecture. Proven track record in people management and engineering leadership.

WORK TIMINGS: 2:00 PM to 11:00 PM IST

This role qualifies for Enhanced Flexibility offered in Synchrony India and will require the incumbent to be available between 06:00 AM Eastern Time – 11:30 AM Eastern Time (timings are anchored to US Eastern hours and will adjust twice a year locally). This window is for meetings with India and US teams. The remaining hours will be flexible for the employee to choose. Exceptions may apply periodically due to business needs) We are proud to offer flexibility at Synchrony. Our way of working allows you the option to work from home or workspaces in our Regional Engagement Hubs—Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, or Delhi/NCR. Occasionally you may be required to commute or travel to Hyderabad or one of the Regional Engagement Hubs for in person engagement activities such as business or team meetings, trainings, and culture events.

For Internal Applicants:

• Understand the criteria or mandatory skills required for the role, before applying
• Inform your manager and HRM before applying for any role on Workday
• Ensure that your professional profile is updated (fields such as education, prior experience, other skills) and it is mandatory to upload your updated resume (Word or PDF format)
• Must not be any corrective action plan (First Formal/Final Formal, PIP)
• L10+ Employees who have completed 18 months in the organization and 12 months in current role and level are only eligible.
• L10+ Employees can apply

Level / Grade : 12

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