Director of payments and commercial technology

Zions Bancorporation’s Enterprise Technology and Operations (ETO) team is transforming what it means to work for a financial institution. With a commitment to technology and innovation, we have been providing our community, clients and colleagues the best experience possible for over 150 years. Help us transform our workforce of the future, today.

We are currently looking for an experienced Director of Payments and Commercial Technology who is an executive technology leader responsible for guiding the technical vision, architectural roadmap, engineering execution, and operational resiliency across our end-to-end commercial banking and payments ecosystem. Reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), this leader assumes overarching accountability for the technology powering our commercial banking clients, alongside the bank’s high-throughput payment rails.

The Director will drive engineering excellence, forge strategic alignments with senior business executives, navigate complex regulatory landscapes, and develop high-performing teams capable of delivering secure, resilient, and differentiated financial technology solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Strategic Leadership & Payments Modernization
   • Unified Technology Strategy: Formulate and execute the enterprise technology roadmap spanning both Commercial Banking solutions (Treasury Management, Commercial Lending, Business Digital Banking) and critical Payments engines (ACH, Wire processing, RTP, FedNow).
   • Executive & Business Alignment: Partner closely with executive business stakeholders—including the Heads of Commercial Banking and Treasury Management—to synchronize technology roadmaps with revenue growth, client acquisition, and margin optimization.
   • FinTech & Ecosystem Innovation: Evaluate, integrate, and manage relationships with strategic enterprise technology vendors and emerging FinTech partners to expand embedded banking, real-time liquidity management, and open-banking APIs.
2. Engineering Delivery & Systems Architecture
   • Portfolio Delivery Governance: Provide executive oversight across the complete engineering delivery lifecycle, guiding solution design, vendor platform evaluations, and core enterprise integrations.
   • Core & Ledger Integration: Architect seamless, resilient interfaces connecting commercial applications and payment hubs.
   • Scalable, Resilient Engineering: Champion modern engineering practices—incorporating cloud-native architectures, containerized microservices, zero-downtime CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code—ensuring high-availability processing for mission-critical banking flows.
   • Interoperability & Data Modernization: Guide data accessibility and streaming architecture to support real-time fraud monitoring, transaction tracking, straight-through processing (STP), and advanced business intelligence.
3. Operational Resiliency, Risk & Regulatory Compliance
   • Mission-Critical Availability: Ensure 24x7x365 platform stability, low-latency transaction execution, and fault-tolerant infrastructure across all payment rails and commercial applications.
   • Regulatory Compliance & Security: Maintain compliance with Federal Reserve regulations, NACHA rules, OCC requirements, FFIEC guidance, internal cybersecurity, and audit baselines.
   • Operational Command: Direct incident management and business continuity strategies during critical outages or payment processing disruptions, ensuring rapid resolution and transparent communication with regulatory bodies and executive leadership.
4. People Leadership & Organizational Scale
   • Multi-Tier Leadership: Lead, develop, and scale an organization comprising the Director of Commercial Technology, engineering managers, software architects, and delivery professionals.
   • Culture & Technical Excellence: Foster a high-accountability engineering culture characterized by technical rigor, customer-centricity, modern development discipline, and continuous learning.
   • Resource & Financial Governance: Manage multi-million-dollar capital and operational budgets, contractor/vendor engagements, software licensing, and talent acquisition strategies to maximize engineering productivity and efficiency.

Qualifications:

Experience Level: 12+ years of progressive technology experience, including at least 5+ years in a senior leadership role (Director or above) managing engineering managers and technical leaders within banking or financial services.

Domain Expertise: Deep technical knowledge of US payment rails and protocols (ACH, Fedwire, CHIPS, The Clearing House RTP, FedNow) alongside deep familiarity with ISO 20022 messaging standards.

Commercial Banking Knowledge: Comprehensive understanding of commercial banking workflows, including Treasury Management services, liquidity management, commercial loan origination/servicing, and digital business portals.

Modern Architecture Track Record: Proven track record leading large-scale legacy modernization initiatives, decoupling legacy platforms into microservices, deploying event streaming architectures (e.g., Kafka, MQ), and establishing cloud-native systems (GCP preferred).

Executive Presence: Outstanding executive communication and stakeholder management skills, with proven ability to present roadmaps, risks, and architectural strategies to C-suite executives, Board committees, and regulatory examiners.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.

Plus: Advanced Degree: Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or an MBA. Platform Experience: Hands-on leadership experience implementing or modernizing platforms such as FIS/Fiserv/CGI payment hubs, TCS BaNCS, nCino, or Finastra. Regulatory & Industry Engagement: Active involvement with payments industry working groups (e.g., NACHA, US Faster Payments Council, Federal Reserve Payments Improvement). Modern Delivery: Certified experience or demonstrated mastery of Agile at Scale (SAFe, LeSS), DevSecOps culture, and automated test-driven development.

Work Location: This position is fully in office (5 days a week) at the Zions Technology Center - 7860 South Bingham Junction Blvd, Midvale, UT 84047

Benefits:

• Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance - START DAY ONE!
• Life and Disability Insurance, Paid Parental Leave and Adoption Assistance
• Health Savings (HSA), Flexible Spending (FSA), and dependent care accounts
• Paid Training, Paid Time Off (PTO) and 11 Paid Federal Holidays
• 401(k) plan with company match, Profit Sharing, competitive compensation in line with work experience
• Mental health benefits including coaching and therapy sessions
• Tuition Reimbursement for qualifying employees
• Employee Ambassador preferred banking products