Lead Architect - HSBC Life

HSBC Life is a world-class institution where you can specialize in Insurance but enjoy the advantages that come with being part of a leading global international bank. Here you can specialize in Insurance but enjoy the advantages that come with being part of a leading global international bank 
Insurance is about people, and the promises they make. At HSBC Life in Singapore we help deliver on these promises by providing a wide variety of life insurance products and services to our clients throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Our employees enjoy a dynamic and innovative workplace and a world of opportunities to develop their careers in a high-profile growing business segment. We empower our combined team of high-performing individuals to build skills and explore new experiences to realise the full potential of being part of HSBC.
Together we will pursue efficient ways of working. We will harness the latest data and technology solutions to achieve meaningful outcomes for our clients. And the protection we offer will create broad and lasting impact, helping clients to be healthier, more productive and more confident in their futures.

We are currently seeking a high calibre professional to join our team as a Lead Architect

In this role you will:

• Own and evolve the target-state architecture for the Life Insurance systems across applications, integration, data, and infrastructure.
• Define and maintain a pragmatic 12–36 month architecture roadmap, balancing regulatory needs, technical debt reduction, cost, and speed to market.
• Provide architectural direction to delivery teams, making timely design decisions and documenting rationale to enable execution.
• Lead solution architecture for major initiatives (new products, digital servicing, claims/underwriting transformation, cloud migration) and govern key artefacts (HLDs, diagrams, patterns, NFRs, tech selection, migration plans).
• Ensure solutions meet non-functional requirements including availability, performance, security, scalability, recoverability, and observability.
• Drive architecture governance, standards, and risk management by participating in review forums, ensuring adherence to HSBC principles/patterns, and mitigating resilience/security/third-party/obsolescence risks.
• Embed security-by-design and operational resilience, including threat modelling, IAM, encryption/secrets, logging/vulnerability management, DR patterns, and RTO/RPO alignment with Risk/Compliance and Singapore regulatory expectations (e.g., MAS controls where applicable).
• Define data and integration strategy (API-first/event-driven where appropriate), ensure data lineage/quality/retention, align to enterprise analytics needs, and lead vendor/partner evaluations and capability building (mentoring, reusable patterns, stakeholder alignment).

To be successful you will need:

• 10+ years in technology with strong architecture depth (solution architecture plus enterprise-level thinking) and a track record delivering complex, integrated systems in regulated environments (financial services/insurance preferred).
• Strong integration architecture capability across APIs, middleware, event streaming, batch and file-based integration, with sound judgement on appropriate patterns.
• Deep non-functional expertise, including resilience, performance engineering, observability, and security-by-design.
• Strong stakeholder management, able to align business, delivery, security, and risk teams, drive decisions, and communicate complex topics clearly with high-quality documentation.
• Domain and technical breadth across life insurance (policy admin, underwriting, claims, servicing, illustration, reinsurance, commissions), plus cloud architecture (hybrid patterns, landing zones, containers, managed services) and data architecture (MDM, analytics enablement, governance).
• Experience leading architecture in vendor-heavy ecosystems and SI engagements; degree in a relevant discipline or equivalent experience, with architecture certifications (e.g., TOGAF/cloud) advantageous but delivery impact prioritised.

Opening up a world of opportunity

HSBC is committed to building a culture where all employees are valued, respected and opinions count. We take pride in providing a workplace that fosters continuous professional development, flexible working and opportunities to grow within an inclusive and diverse environment. Personal data held by the Bank relating to employment applications will be used in accordance with our Privacy Statement, which is available on our website.

Issued by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited.

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