Director of Payments and Commercial Technology

Zions Bancorporation•Midvale, UT

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Zions Bancorporation’s Enterprise Technology and Operations team is seeking an executive technology leader accountable for the technical vision, architectural roadmap, engineering execution, and operational resiliency of the end-to-end commercial banking and payments ecosystem. Reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer, the Director guides technology supporting commercial banking clients and the bank’s high-throughput payment rails. The role partners with senior business executives, navigates regulatory requirements, and develops teams that deliver secure, resilient, and differentiated financial technology solutions. The Director sets and executes technology strategy across commercial banking solutions—including Treasury Management, Commercial Lending, and Business Digital Banking—and payment engines such as ACH, wire processing, RTP, and FedNow. The role oversees engineering delivery and architecture, modernizes systems and data capabilities, ensures critical platforms remain available and compliant, leads incident response and business continuity, and scales engineering teams and budgets. The position is fully in office five days a week at the Zions Technology Center in Midvale, Utah. Benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance starting day one; life and disability insurance; paid parental leave and adoption assistance; HSA, FSA, and dependent care accounts; paid training; PTO and 11 paid federal holidays; a 401(k) with company match; profit sharing; mental health benefits; tuition reimbursement; and preferred banking products for employee ambassadors.

Requirements

12+ years of progressive technology experience.
At least 5+ years in a senior leadership role at Director level or above, managing engineering managers and technical leaders within banking or financial services.
Deep technical knowledge of U.S. payment rails and protocols, including ACH, Fedwire, CHIPS, The Clearing House RTP, and FedNow, as well as familiarity with ISO 20022 messaging standards.
Comprehensive understanding of commercial banking workflows, including Treasury Management services, liquidity management, commercial loan origination and servicing, and digital business portals.
Track record leading large-scale legacy modernization, decoupling legacy platforms into microservices, deploying event-streaming architectures such as Kafka or MQ, and establishing cloud-native systems; GCP is preferred.
Outstanding executive communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to present roadmaps, risks, and architectural strategies to C-suite executives, Board committees, and regulatory examiners.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or an MBA.
Hands-on leadership implementing or modernizing platforms such as FIS, Fiserv, or CGI payment hubs; TCS BaNCS; nCino; or Finastra.
Active involvement with payments industry working groups such as NACHA, the U.S. Faster Payments Council, or Federal Reserve Payments Improvement.
Certified experience or demonstrated mastery of Agile at Scale (SAFe or LeSS), DevSecOps culture, and automated test-driven development.

Responsibilities

Formulate and execute an enterprise technology roadmap spanning commercial banking solutions and payment engines, including ACH, wire processing, RTP, and FedNow.
Partner with executive business stakeholders, including the Heads of Commercial Banking and Treasury Management, to align technology roadmaps with revenue growth, client acquisition, and margin optimization.
Evaluate, integrate, and manage strategic enterprise technology vendors and FinTech partners to support embedded banking, real-time liquidity management, and open-banking APIs.
Provide executive oversight across the engineering delivery lifecycle, including solution design, vendor platform evaluations, and core enterprise integrations.
Architect resilient interfaces connecting commercial applications, payment hubs, and core ledger systems.
Champion cloud-native architectures, containerized microservices, zero-downtime CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code for highly available banking flows.
Guide data accessibility and streaming architecture for real-time fraud monitoring, transaction tracking, straight-through processing, and business intelligence.
Ensure 24x7x365 platform stability, low-latency transaction execution, and fault-tolerant infrastructure across payment rails and commercial applications.
Maintain compliance with Federal Reserve regulations, NACHA rules, OCC requirements, FFIEC guidance, cybersecurity requirements, and audit baselines.
Direct incident management and business continuity during critical outages or payment processing disruptions, ensuring rapid resolution and transparent communication with regulators and executive leadership.
Lead, develop, and scale an organization comprising the Director of Commercial Technology, engineering managers, software architects, and delivery professionals.
Foster an accountable engineering culture emphasizing technical rigor, customer-centricity, modern development discipline, and continuous learning.
Manage multi-million-dollar capital and operating budgets, contractor and vendor engagements, software licensing, and talent acquisition strategies.