Head of Department – ServiceNow Platform & Delivery (all humans)

Make a difference in the financial life of millions of people: At Erste Digital you are co-creating the digital future, in which better financial health is possible. #believeinyourself

We are part of Erste Group - the largest banking group in Central and Eastern Europe with more than 2,500 branches and over 45,000 employees. Our more than 2,000 IT experts and enthusiasts are the bank's Digital Muscle.

Our ServiceNow platform is evolving from its strong foundation in IT Service Management into a strategic enterprise platform supporting an increasing range of capabilities across the organization. In addition to our established ITSM services, we are expanding the platform into areas such as IT Operations, Security, Risk & Compliance, Third-Party Risk Management and Operational Resilience, while increasingly leveraging automation and AI capabilities.

At the core of the platform is our Configuration Management Database (CMDB), providing the common data foundation for ITSM and an increasing number of ServiceNow capabilities. The department is responsible for the governance and continuous evolution of the CMDB and its policies and is driving the adoption of the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) to further improve service transparency and dependency visibility.

With around 25team members and further growth ahead, the department combines platform ownership, software engineering and service delivery, structured around 3 Product Owners who own the platform's functional domains and who are supported by engineering teams. It works closely with business and IT stakeholders to onboard new use cases while ensuring that the ServiceNow platform remains reliable, scalable and sustainable as its scope and strategic importance continue to grow.

Requirements

What to do:

• Take end-to-end responsibility for the ServiceNow platform and its strategic and technical evolution, ensuring a reliable, scalable and sustainable enterprise platform.

• Drive a fully agile way of working across the department, ensuring clear ownership, transparency, predictable delivery and continuous improvement.

• Establish effective platform governance and software delivery practices covering architecture, development standards, integrations, testing, releases, upgrades and operations.

• Own and evolve the governance and policies around our CMDB, ensuring it provides a reliable foundation for IT Service Management, service transparency and other ServiceNow capabilities.

• Lead and develop the department's Product Owners, who engage directly with process owners and other stakeholders, and translate their input into sustainable ServiceNow capabilities and a clear platform roadmap.

• Manage ServiceNow as a strategic technology provider as well as external consulting and implementation partners, ensuring delivery quality, effective use of external capacities, knowledge transfer and commercial performance.

• Collaborate across IT, architecture, security and business functions and take responsibility for the department's budget, capacities, licenses and external spend while fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership and continuous improvement, including within the Product Owner and Tech Lead layer of the team.

You check these boxes:

• University degree in a technical, engineering, or IT-related discipline, or equivalent knowledge and competencies acquired through professional experience and industry-recognized certifications

• Experienced people leader, leading with a visible and approachable leadership style, maintaining close engagement with employees at all levels, fostering trust, empowerment, talent development

• Several years of experience leading ServiceNow, enterprise platform, software engineering or comparable technology teams in a complex enterprise environment

• Understanding of the complete lifecycle from requirements engineering and architecture through to development, testing, release to production and operations

• Broad knowledge of ServiceNow capabilities including Configuration Management principles with emphasis on governance and data quality.

• Experience in managing major software vendors, consulting companies and implementation partners, including delivery quality, external capacities, commercial relationships and vendor performance.

• Combine strategic thinking with a pragmatic delivery mindset being able to balance business demand with platform standardization, technical quality and long-term maintainability.

• Communicate fluently in English

Why you will like us:

• Possibility to benefit and learn from our international, talented and passionate community at Erste

• Interest groups and clubs: Take part in discussions and get involved in projects. Numerous interest groups invite you to engage with a topic

• Health Care - Taking care of your health is important. That’s why we contribute to your above standard medical examination and provide a helpline in case of hard lifetime situations. You also receive a salary compensation during sick leave

• Work-Life-Balance - Sabbatical, paternity leave, contribution to marriage & childbirth, 4 days of extra holiday per year, contribution to the 3rd pillar and MultiSport card. This is how we promote a balance between work, leisure, and family

• Employee Referral Program - Become a talent scout for career opportunities in IT. We are rewarding every successful referral for Erste Digital

• A competitive and performance-related salary dependent on your professional and personal qualifications is granted - we are obliged by law to quote the minimum wage of EUR 4500,- gross per month for this full time position. But this is just a formality, we are more than happy to discuss your actual expectations.

The way we are:

Erste Group considers the diversity of its employees as key to innovation and success. As employer we are proud to offer everyone equal chances, irrespective of age, skin colour, religious belief, gender, sexual orientation or origin.