Lead Architect Asia ex. Japan (Data)

MetLife is leading the charge in transforming the global insurance industry by pursuing innovation and using digital technologies to redefine the customer experience. We look at digital as being part of everyone’s job description – a common thread linking all of our teams around the world.

Position: Lead Architect

Job Location: Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia

Department: Asia IT Architecture

The Role:

• Subject matter expert in information technology architecture with focus on insurance industry
• Influences Asia and regional leaders to ensure success of enterprise-level programs in the context of technology & solutions.
• Drives to maximize efficiency in both application development, security, and infrastructure.
• Assures that architecture solution is to deliver business values, aligned to MetLife IT strategic roadmap and standards in order to maximize synergies and enterprise leverage

Key Responsibilities:

• Assist MetLife Asia departmental executives to develop, monitor and continually update long term information technology architecture, roadmaps and annual plans.
• Identify gaps or deficiencies in the existing portfolio of IT solutions, management information systems and reporting, technology landscape and processes.
• Facilitate effective MetLife Asia key initiatives, including the coordination of an appropriately balanced pursuit of business objectives, IT strategic alignment, technical and solution per architecture viewpoints.
• Simplify the IT landscape by reducing complexity, diversity of solution and establishing consistency of approach within IT, covering IT applications, security, and Infrastructure architecture.
• Manage the identification and analysis of business drivers to business capabilities, information, technical and solution architecture requirements, including analysing industry trends, technology to determine their potential impacts on the MetLife Asia architecture landscape.
• Illustrate a deep understanding of how both current and future technology can be used to drive business transformation.
• Advise and collaborate locally and regionally with all levels of financial, non-financial, technical and executive audiences to develop strategies and ensure integrity of the architecture program.
• Drive the development of enterprise standards and strategic target states and ensure alignment across MetLife technology departments and business functions.
• Liaise with external vendors and technology partners such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc.

Candidate Qualifications:

Essential Business Experience and Technical Skills:

• Must have minimum 8 years working experience in IT architecture solution design preferably in the life insurance or financial services industries
• Demonstrate experience and knowledge in information technology architecture practice, standards and plans in the financial industry. Life insurance experience will be a plus.
• Possess Data Architecture experience. Knowledge of medallion architecture and data mesh architecture would be beneficial.
• Experience in Data Warehousing and BI architecture such as the ETL process, dimensional modeling, OLAP, and data analytics. Additionally, experience with tools such as DataBricks and Azure Synapse Analytics would be a plus.
• Knowledgeable about data governance, including security, privacy and compliance.
• Possess wide technical knowledges and architecture design experience on SOA architecture, API/microservices, cloud service and so on. Having experience such as Kubernetes, Openshift or Azure will be a plus.
• Must have a good understanding of the financial services business and be able to discuss the business implications of technology decisions, as well as the technology implications of business decisions, particularly in terms of costs and implementation roadmaps
• Must have minimum 3 years experience in IT Architecuture Governance and demonstrate strong capability in communication and negotiation
• Must demonstrate expertise and implementation experience in Enterprise Architecture frameworks such as TOGAF, Zachman and other associated frameworks.
• Strong interpersonal, conflict resolution and negotiation skills.

Key Responsibilities:

• Responsible for global network planning, network architecture design, and engineering.
• Integrates and schematically depicts network architectures, topologies, hardware, software, transmission links and protocols into complete network configurations.
• Responsible for network problem resolution, (Tier 3 support) utilizing structured troubleshooting tools and techniques.
• Interfaces with vendors (Cisco, ATT, Avaya, Verizon, etc.) on complex systems problems.
• Responsible for the documentation of technical standards and interfaces in support of global network.
• Prepare network proposals with financial impact on hardware, software, and FTEs.
• Responsible for the daily management, monitoring, and troubleshooting of all Corporate Palo Alto network systems
• Plan and execute changes to Firewalls using approved management tools, and in accordance with established change management processes

Why MetLife?

At MetLife, we don't fit into a box, we create our own boxes. Our Global Technology team is helping to transform a customer-first Fortune 50 company - by offering the high-tech digital solutions customers have come to expect, while delivery high-touch customer care during the moments that matter most.

Our tech teams enable the business, helping fuel MetLife's purpose: always with you, building a more confident future. It's where you can grow your career, driving digital transformation in an agile, open, and inclusive environment, where every voice carries weight, and no idea is left off the table.

Here, innovation is everybody’s job. It’s not done within one team or in a lab. Whether you’re driving continuous improvement with your DevOps team, integrating data science and AI into our decision making, or developing best-in-class digital and cloud solutions that protect customer data and personalize their experience, what you build matters as part of a team where together, we can do more.