Technology Director - Financial Crimes Risk Management Technology

About this role:

Wells Fargo is seeking a Technology Director - Financial Crimes Risk Management Technology. 

The Technology Director - Financial Crimes Risk Management Technology will lead the transformation, delivery, and operational excellence of a significant portfolio of Financial Crimes Risk Management applications. This senior leadership position is responsible for executing the Financial Crimes Technology strategy, translating enterprise priorities into actionable roadmaps, and delivering secure, resilient, scalable, and user-centric capabilities. 

This role will be within Enterprise Functions Technology (EFT) and will drive platform modernization, AI-enabled transformation, data strategies, engineering excellence, regulatory readiness, technology risk management, and strong partnerships with Financial Crimes business, product, operations, risk, and compliance teams. The ideal leader will combine deep expertise in Financial Crimes Risk Management applications with strong technical understanding of AI/ML, distributed systems, modern data platforms, cloud-ready architectures, and enterprise engineering practices. The successful candidate will have a strong technical background, proven leadership experience, disciplined execution, and a focus on delivering measurable business and risk outcomes. 

At Wells Fargo, we value you for who you are and the potential you possess. Our innovative approach to work empowers individuals nationwide to express themselves, excel, and take bold steps. Recognizing each person's uniqueness brings out their utmost capabilities. Join us at Wells Fargo, where we strive to bring out your best by giving you ours in return. 

In this role, you will: 

• Manage a team of engineering managers and engineering leads
• Manage a team of architects, and senior engineers accountable for Financial Crimes technology delivery and operations. 
• Focus on delivering commitments aligned to enterprise strategic priorities
• Build support for strategies with business and technology leaders

• Execute technology strategies aligned with enterprise priorities and the broader Financial Crimes Technology direction. 

• Build support for strategies and investment priorities with business, product, risk, compliance, operations, data, architecture, and technology leaders. 
• Guide development of actionable roadmaps and plans

• Guide development and execution of measurable outcomes. 
• Identify opportunities and strategies for continuous improvement of software engineering practices

• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in delivery governance, operational effectiveness, and platform health. 
• Provide oversight to software craftsmanship, security, availability, resilience, and scalability of solutions developed by the teams or third party providers

• Provide oversight of maintainability of solutions delivered by internal teams and third-party providers. 

• Lead delivery of regulatory, risk, control, and technology commitments with strong execution discipline and transparent reporting. 

• Set technology risk management expectations and partner with stakeholders to address vulnerabilities, resiliency risks, end-of-life technologies, technical debt, and control gaps. 

• Manage budgets, investments, vendor engagements, sourcing strategies, and engineering capacity in alignment with portfolio priorities. 

• Develop strategies to hire, retain, and grow engineering talent, strengthen leadership succession, and build critical domain and technical capabilities. 

• Lead complex transformation programs, large-scale migrations, platform upgrades, and integrations while protecting production stability and minimizing delivery risk. 

• Champion responsible adoption of AI-enabled capabilities for both engineering productivity and Financial Crimes business processes, with clear measures of adoption, quality, efficiency, and value. 

• Collaborate with and influence professionals at all levels, including senior business and technology leaders, control partners, auditors, regulators, and external service providers. 

• Create a culture of ownership, innovation, transparency, collaboration, continuous learning, and accountability. 

• Lead the team to achieve business, regulatory, engineering, talent, financial, and operational objectives. 
• Identify financial management and strategic resourcing
• Set risk management guidelines and partner with stakeholders to implement key risk initiatives
• Develop strategies for hiring engineering talent
• Lead implementation of projects and encourage engineering innovation
• Collaborate and influence all levels of professionals including more experienced managers
• Lead team to achieve objectives
• Interface with external agencies, regulatory bodies or industry forums
• Manage allocation of people and financial resources for Technology Strategic Leadership
• Develop and guide a culture of talent development to meet business objectives and strategy

Strategic Leadership & Transformation 

• Execute the multi-year transformation of Financial Crimes Risk Management technology through AI, automation, modern data capabilities, and scalable engineering platforms. 

• Translate the Financial Crimes Technology strategy into portfolio-level target states, sequenced roadmaps, investment priorities, and delivery plans. 

• Drive modernization of legacy systems toward resilient, modular, API-enabled, distributed, and cloud-ready architectures. 

• Partner with business, product, operations, risk, compliance, data, and architecture teams to align technology outcomes with enterprise priorities and regulatory expectations. 

• Balance modernization, risk reduction, regulatory delivery, production stability, and business capability enhancement when setting priorities. 

• Establish outcome-based measures for modernization progress, delivery predictability, technology health, engineering productivity, and business value realization. 

Financial Crimes Risk Management Technology Delivery 

• Oversee the design, build, maintenance, and enhancement of Financial Crimes Risk Management applications and shared capabilities within the assigned portfolio. 

• Provide domain-informed leadership across capabilities such as Transaction Monitoring, Customer Due Diligence, Customer and Transaction Screening, Sanctions, Investigations, Case Management, Financial Crimes data services, and regulatory reporting, as applicable to the portfolio. 

• Deliver regulatory and business commitments with appropriate quality, traceability, controls, and operational readiness. 

• Drive simplification, platform consolidation, workflow automation, reuse of common capabilities, and reduction of avoidable application and process fragmentation. 

• Improve delivery effectiveness through clear product and technology alignment, disciplined prioritization, dependency management, and transparent governance. 

• Ensure solutions are designed around user needs and deliver measurable improvements in detection, screening, investigation, decision support, operational efficiency, and risk management. 

• Deploy AI-based solutions supporting both technology and business use cases, with responsible controls and measurable outcomes. 

Data, Architecture & Engineering Excellence 

• Champion data quality, lineage, governance, observability, security, and fit-for-purpose data design across Financial Crimes platforms. 

• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices, including DevSecOps, automated testing, continuous delivery, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, API-first design, microservices, and event-driven patterns where appropriate. 

• Advance modern data platforms and analytics capabilities that support risk detection, screening, investigations, reporting, forecasting, and portfolio monitoring. 

• Establish and enforce architecture principles, engineering guardrails, reusable patterns, and non-functional requirements that improve interoperability, resilience, scalability, and maintainability. 

• Lead large-scale migrations, upgrades, integrations, and data transformations with clear transition states, risk controls, and decommissioning outcomes. 

• Improve software quality and engineering productivity through responsible use of AI-assisted engineering, automation, standard toolchains, and objective measures. 

• Maintain strong focus on production stability, incident prevention, recovery readiness, capacity, performance, and elimination of key-person dependencies. 

• Provide technology leadership across diverse application and data platforms, including Java, .NET, Python, JavaScript, Big Data, PySpark, Ab Initio, SSIS, and mainframe ecosystems, ensuring engineering standards, modernization priorities, architectural consistency, and long-term platform sustainability. 

Leadership & Stakeholder Management 

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing global engineering organization with clear accountability for outcomes. 

• Build trusted partnerships with Financial Crimes business, product, operations, risk, compliance, data, audit, and enterprise technology stakeholders. 

• Communicate strategy, priorities, trade-offs, delivery progress, risks, and decisions with clarity and transparency. 

• Develop engineering managers, architects, principal engineers, and technical leaders who can independently drive complex outcomes. 

• Manage budgets, vendor relationships, sourcing models, strategic investments, and workforce plans with strong financial discipline. 

• Create an inclusive environment that encourages constructive challenge, enterprise thinking, innovation, and continuous improvement. 

• Represent the assigned technology portfolio in senior governance forums and, when required, engagements with auditors, regulators, external agencies, or industry forums. 

Required Qualifications: 

• 10+ years of Technology Strategic Leadership experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education
• 4+ years of management or leadership experience
• Demonstrated experience leading engineering managers, technical leaders, and enterprise-scale software delivery teams. 

• Proven expertise in Financial Crimes Risk Management technology, including experience with one or more of the following: Transaction Monitoring, Customer Due Diligence, Customer or Transaction Screening, Sanctions, Investigations, Case Management, Financial Crimes data, or regulatory reporting. 

• Experience leading complex modernization, transformation, migration, or platform integration programs in a regulated enterprise environment. 

• Strong understanding of modern software engineering, distributed systems, enterprise data platforms, APIs, cloud-ready architectures, security, resilience, and operational risk. 

• Experience applying AI/ML, advanced analytics, or automation to engineering or business processes with appropriate governance and controls. 

• Strong technical breadth across modern and legacy software development stacks, with experience leading engineering teams that build and support solutions using Java, .NET, Python, and related frameworks, along with exposure to JavaScript, Big Data platforms, PySpark, Ab Initio, SSIS, and enterprise mainframe technologies including COBOL. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead modernization initiatives spanning distributed systems, cloud-ready architectures, data platforms, and legacy application ecosystems while balancing business value, technology risk, operational stability, and regulatory commitments. 

Desired Qualifications: 

• Proven track record modernizing legacy systems while maintaining regulatory compliance, delivery continuity, and operational stability. 

• Deep understanding of Financial Crimes business processes, technology ecosystems, data flows, regulatory expectations, and control environments. 

• Experience with cloud architectures, microservices, event-driven systems, data warehousing, data analytics, Agile, DevSecOps, and Generative AI. 

• Demonstrated ability to convert strategy into executable roadmaps, investment choices, measurable outcomes, and sustained delivery. 

• Strong experience collaborating with product, business, operations, risk, compliance, data, and architecture stakeholders to deliver valuable and user-centric solutions. 

• Exceptional leadership, executive communication, influencing, and stakeholder management skills. 

• Experience supporting regulatory examinations, audit engagements, risk remediation, and technology control programs. 

• Experience managing technology budgets, vendor contracts, sourcing strategies, and workforce or capacity plans. 

• Strategic thinker with strong execution focus, sound judgment, and analytical, financial, and operational discipline. 

• Financial services experience with knowledge of regulatory, risk, compliance, and operational control requirements. 

• Experience leading modernization of mixed-technology environments consisting of cloud-ready, distributed, data-centric, integration, and mainframe-based applications. 

• Working knowledge of enterprise development platforms and software stacks including Java, .NET, Python, JavaScript, Big Data technologies, PySpark, Ab Initio, SSIS, and COBOL-based mainframe systems. 

Job Expectations: 

• Be Humble: You are accomplished and remain open to learning from others. 

• Work Transparently: You communicate honestly, directly, and with appropriate transparency. 

• Take Ownership: You embrace accountability, make informed decisions, and follow through on commitments. 

• Learn More: You continuously strengthen your leadership, domain, business, and technology capabilities. 

• Show Gratitude: You demonstrate appreciation and respect for colleagues and partners. 

• Develop Talent: You actively coach leaders and engineers and build sustainable organizational capability. 

• Deliver Outcomes: You maintain focus on measurable business value, regulatory commitments, engineering excellence, and operational resilience. 

Posting End Date:

8 Oct 2026

*Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

We Value Equal Opportunity

Wells Fargo is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Employees support our focus on building strong customer relationships balanced with a strong risk mitigating and compliance-driven culture which firmly establishes those disciplines as critical to the success of our customers and company. They are accountable for execution of all applicable risk programs (Credit, Market, Financial Crimes, Operational, Regulatory Compliance), which includes effectively following and adhering to applicable Wells Fargo policies and procedures, appropriately fulfilling risk and compliance obligations, timely and effective escalation and remediation of issues, and making sound risk decisions. There is emphasis on proactive monitoring, governance, risk identification and escalation, as well as making sound risk decisions commensurate with the business unit’s risk appetite and all risk and compliance program requirements.

Candidates applying to job openings posted in Canada: Applications for employment are encouraged from all qualified candidates, including women, persons with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and visible minorities. Accommodation for applicants with disabilities is available upon request in connection with the recruitment process.

Applicants with Disabilities

To request a medical accommodation during the application or interview process, visit Disability Inclusion at Wells Fargo.

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Wells Fargo maintains a drug free workplace.  Please see our Drug and Alcohol Policy to learn more.

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a. Third-Party recordings are prohibited unless authorized by Wells Fargo.

b. Wells Fargo requires you to directly represent your own experiences during the recruiting and hiring process.