Counterparty Credit Risk (CCR) Operations IT Lead

Mizuho•New York, NY

18h•Hybrid

About The Position

Credit Risk Technology at Mizuho Americas is seeking a seasoned Operations IT Lead to lead production stability, resilience, operational excellence, and continuous improvement of Counterparty Credit Risk (CCR) technology platforms supporting Exposure Management (EM), Credit Risk Reporting (CRR) users, Risk Analytics, Front Office, and Regulatory Reporting. This role defines and enhances a global IT operations model, effectively leveraging offshore resources to deliver reliable, scalable, and cost‑efficient support for exposure calculation, limit monitoring, and what‑if pre-trade analysis platforms. The Director partners closely with Exposure Management users, ensuring technology operations proactively provide scalable 24x7 support to production issues, business workflows, on-going model monitoring/validation, and regulatory timelines while embedding a strong culture of continuous improvement, automation, and operational risk reduction. This role is accountable for ensuring the availability, performance and regulatory compliance of systems that calculate aggregate, and report counterparty exposure across Exchange-Traded Derivatives (ETD), OTC, Securities Financing Transactions (SFT) products. The candidate must be a people manager, technically proficient, able to multi-task well, explain problems/solutions clearly, is well organized, and has the ability to work toward the united large vision with can-do attitude.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in IT Operations / Production Support within financial services.
5+ years in a Director‑level or equivalent leadership role supporting risk or exposure platforms.
Demonstrated experience operating global, offshore‑leveraged support models in a regulated environment.
Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Management of Information Systems, or related business discipline(s).
Strong understanding of Exposure Management and Counterparty Credit Risk concepts, including derivative trade cycles, market data, PFE, EPE, Collateral/margin management, limits, stress testing, and what‑if analysis.
Experience supporting batch‑intensive and intraday real‑time risk platforms (Java, Angular, Python, PySpark, ETL, Stored Procedure, SQL, Snowflake, PowerBI).
Cloud computing and infrastructure (Databricks, Medallion architecture, Azure, ADF, Spark based distributed compute).
Proven track record driving operational excellence, automation, and process maturity with an Agile based application/software development.
Ability to utilize ServiceNow, JIRA, Confluence, PowerBI to manage incidents, tasks, and releases, generate a system diagnosis report, and prove KPIs based operational improvement.
Familiarity with ITIL‑based service management (ITSM) frameworks, DevOps, CI/CD, and reliability engineering practices.
Demonstrated continuous improvement mindset, with the ability to drive cultural change across onshore and offshore teams.
Strong experience leading distributed, multicultural teams and third‑party vendors.
Excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills with the ability to engage Exposure Management users, Risk leadership, and senior Technology stakeholders.
Ability to prioritize and effectively manage multiple tasks under pressure.
Highly motivated, self-directed individual with the ability to work independently and in team environments.
Effective presentation skills for strategic planning and vision including system/architecture/data flow diagrams, combined with extreme attention to detail.
Strong analytical, problem solving (breaking ambiguous/large problems to smaller/less complex ones), and decision-making skills.
Collaborative team player and relationship builder.

Responsibilities

Own end‑to‑end production operations for applications supporting Exposure Management, including EPE/PFE calculations, limit monitoring, what‑if pre-trade intraday analysis, and reporting.
Ensure platforms meet the availability, performance/SLAs, and data integrity expectations of EM users during daily, intraday, and regulatory cycles (monthly, quarterly, annually).
Act as the senior IT Operations liaison for Exposure Management stakeholders, translating business priorities into operational execution.
Establish a continuous improvement mindset across IT Operations, with a focus on reducing incidents, manual interventions, and operational risk, and improving turnaround time for incidents.
Define and track operational KPIs/metrics (availability, incident trends, MTTR, SLA breach, rerun, batch success rates) and drive measurable month-over-month improvements.
Proactively identify and execute opportunities for process standardization/optimization, tooling enhancements, and operational simplification across the CCR application stack.
Lead a globally distributed operations model, leveraging offshore teams for L1/L2 support, batch operations oversight, upstream data feed validation, data quality monitoring.
Define clear onshore/offshore operating boundaries, escalation paths, and ownership models to ensure seamless 24x7 support.
Drive knowledge transfer, documentation standards, and runbook maturity to improve offshore effectiveness and reduce dependency on key individuals, ensuring service quality, productivity, and continuous skill uplift.
Serve as senior escalation point for high‑severity production incidents, particularly those impacting exposure reporting, limit breaches, what-if intraday analysis or regulatory deliverables.
Drive root cause analysis (RCA) for impactful incidents such as calculation breaks, data validation/reconciliation issues, ensuring recurring issues are eliminated through permanent fixes rather than short‑term workarounds.
Enforce robust change and release governance aligned with Mizuho Americas CAB, DevOps, CI/CD, risk, audit, and control standards.
Champion automation and self‑healing for batch monitoring, data validation, reconciliations, and recovery processes for production as well as lower testing environments.
Partner with Engineering and Infrastructure teams to improve observability, alerting, capacity planning, and resilience of CCR platforms.
Ensure DR/BCP readiness for EM‑critical systems, including regular/annual testing and documented recovery procedures.
Ensure CCR applications meet regulatory, audit, security, and internal risk management requirements.
Lead IT Operations engagement for internal audits, regulatory exams, and model governance reviews, demonstrating control maturity.
Maintain strong IT control frameworks (access, change, data integrity) across IT and business teams.
Build and lead a high‑performing global IT Operations team, fostering a culture where IT Operations is viewed as a strategic partner to the business, not just a support function.
Communicate operational health, risks, and improvement initiatives to senior Technology, Risk, and Exposure Management leadership.