Software Program Manager | ODS Openbank México
Country: Mexico
Santander (www.santander.com) is evolving from a global, high-impact brand into a technology-driven organization. Openbank is Santander Group's global digital consumer bank, bringing together retail banking, mobility finance and consumer lending solutions in one integrated digital platform.
The Difference You Make
Openbank is looking for a Software Program Manager based in Mexico City, within Open Digital Services (ODS) México. This is an opportunity to play a key role in building the technology platform behind Openbank Mexico, leading the evolution of Core Banking and Digital Channels while connecting local market needs with Santander's global technology ecosystem.
The Role
Lead the engineering organization responsible for developing, evolving, and maintaining Openbank Mexico's Core Banking and Digital Channels capabilities, delivering secure, scalable, resilient, and high-quality banking technology that enables business growth, outstanding customer experience, regulatory compliance, and sustainable operational efficiency.
Operating within Santander's global technology ecosystem, the Software Program Manager will balance local market requirements with global platform strategy and ensure effective collaboration between Openbank Mexico, ODS, and global technology teams. The role requires deep engineering expertise, strong executive leadership, product orientation, experience delivering complex technology initiatives in highly regulated environments, and a strong production mindset to identify stability risks early and lead effectively during incidents and contingency situations.
Key Responsibilities
•Define and execute the engineering strategy for adopting global platforms in line with Openbank Mexico business priorities and ODS global technology direction; lead local Core Banking and Digital Channels teams; apply group engineering standards for scalability, security, maintainability, reliability, and reuse; and guide architecture, technical decisions, and technical debt management.
•Lead end-to-end engineering execution from discovery and design through development, testing, production deployment, and stabilization; coordinate Core and Channels delivery; manage capacity, commitments, dependencies, and trade-offs with global teams; and improve predictability, throughput, and time-to-market without compromising quality or resilience.
•Establish engineering excellence through modern software development practices and AI, including code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, DevSecOps, observability, release engineering, DORA and SPACE metrics, AI-assisted development, root-cause analysis, preventive improvements, and clear ownership of software quality.
•Lead Openbank Mexico's adoption of global Core Banking and Digital Channels capabilities; influence global platform roadmaps; promote reusable, configurable, API-first, modular solutions; assess local solutions when global capabilities cannot meet critical needs; and manage migration, modernization, compatibility, regression, integration, stability, fragmentation, and technical-debt risks.
•Ensure solutions meet security, resilience, auditability, and regulatory requirements; partner with SRE, Infrastructure, CISO, Risk, Compliance, and Operations; strengthen incident resolution, problem management, root-cause remediation, controlled deployments, regression testing, quality gates, technical ownership, disaster recovery, and business continuity readiness.
•Lead and develop engineering managers, technical leads, and software engineers across Core and Channels; build a high-performance culture of ownership, collaboration, accountability, technical excellence, and learning; develop leadership pipelines, succession plans, career paths, skills, team structures, and capacity; and strengthen local capability, knowledge sharing, and use of global expertise and reusable assets.
•Serve as the principal engineering counterpart to Openbank Mexico's Head of Technology & Operations, Product leadership, and relevant ODS executives; translate priorities into engineering requirements; negotiate capacity, sequencing, and trade-offs; resolve local and global priority conflicts; report transparently on performance, risks, dependencies, and remediation; foster One Team across Product, Engineering, QA, Architecture, and Operations; and escalate material risks with alternatives and recommendations.
What You'll Bring
Professional Experience & Qualifications
•12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience leading complex engineering organizations, backend/core platforms, and customer-facing digital channels.
•Experience delivering large-scale, mission-critical, highly available transactional systems and leading engineering transformation, developer productivity, and software delivery quality.
•Experience operating in complex global matrix organizations with shared ownership and constrained resources, and managing technology modernization, legacy integration, and large-scale platform migrations.
•Experience in financial services or another highly regulated, transaction-intensive industry; digital banking experience strongly preferred.
Hard Skills
•Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, APIs, event-driven integration, and modern software engineering practices.
•Strong knowledge of DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and software reliability practices.
•Strong executive communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management capabilities.
Language
•Fluency in Spanish and English.
Leadership Competencies
•Deep technical judgment and business acumen, with the ability to translate strategic objectives into engineering execution.
•Customer and product orientation, systems thinking, architectural discipline, prioritization, trade-off management, and evidence-based decision-making.
•Ability to challenge assumptions constructively, resolve complex cross-functional dependencies, develop talent and engineering culture, and remain accountable for results, quality, and long-term sustainability.
Success Measures
•Business delivery: committed strategic engineering milestones, production delivery predictability, and time-to-market.
•Engineering quality and operational resilience: production defect leakage, rework, automated testing maturity, release reliability, incidents, recovery performance, recurring failures, and remediation effectiveness.
•Engineering productivity: lead time for changes, deployment frequency, flow efficiency, and measurable improvements from engineering automation.
•Platform sustainability: global convergence, technical debt reduction, architectural standardization, and reuse.
•Organization and talent: engineering capability development, retention of critical talent, leadership succession, and effective cross-team collaboration.
Targets and baselines will be agreed during the initial operating period.
We Value Your Impact
You can expect a fair, competitive reward package that reflects the impact you create and the value you deliver. Benefits include:
•BeHealthy, a global wellness programme promoting holistic wellbeing
•Parental leave, childcare support and family-friendly programmes tailored to each life stage
•Global opportunities and broad career paths
•Paid volunteering time
