Manager, Corporate Digital Backbone (ITSCD) at World Bank Group

Description

Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity to help client countries solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending poverty on a livable planet. 

With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, the World Bank Group works with public and private partners, invests in groundbreaking projects and uses data, research, and technology to develop solutions to pressing global, regional and local challenges. For more information, please visit http:  http://www.worldbank.org.

The organization has undertaken an ambitious exercise to revise its mandate, products and structure to adjust to the multiple, intertwined crises affecting the world today (see Evolution Roadmap), in the move to becoming a better Bank.

Business Unit Overview

The mission of the Information and Technology Solutions (ITS) Vice Presidential Unit (VPU) is to leverage information and technology as a force multiplier to accelerate, deepen, and sustain development impact. Their vision is to harness information and technology for a world free of poverty on a livable planet. For more information on ITS, check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=VTFGffa1Y7w. . 

Department Context

The WBG Corporate Solutions Department (ITSCO) is focused on the digital transformation of essential corporate services to ensure WBG operations are seamless, resilient, and future‑ready. Uniting digitalization roadmaps, experience design, process optimization, application delivery, systems management, and technology modernization across some 170 products and services, the department links business ambition with operational excellence—from intuitive employee experiences and precision payroll to data-driven decision making, intelligent automation, and AI enablement. Operating from Washington, Chennai, Sofia, and Singapore in a global delivery model, the team seeks to combine disciplined strategic planning with focused roadmaps, agile product delivery, design‑forward innovation, digital engineering, automation, and AI to produce solutions that are engaging, impactful, and efficient. The goal is a unified, OneWBG corporate backbone—streamlined, connected, and adaptive—that empowers leaders, staff, partners, and shareholders with the processes, capabilities, and insights to advance the WBG's mission at scale.

The department comprises of four distinct but complementary units which work closely together to deliver on the department's mandate:

- Corporate Digital Acceleration unit: Accelerates digital transformation for corporate business functions through design thinking, digital innovation, rapid prototyping, reimagining processes, and AI enablement, e.g. AI-first work digitalization strategies.

- Corporate Experience Solutions unit: Delivers optimal digital experiences for WBG employees, clients, partners, shareholders, and beneficiaries through engaging, effective, and user-centric solutions, e.g. intranets, self service, work productivity and decision-support systems.

- Corporate Business Solutions unit: Enables critical corporate business processes and functions of the WBG through accurate, efficient, and resilient back-office systems, e.g. ERP systems supporting human resources and budget functions.

- Corporate Digital Backbone unit: Creates an autonomous digital backbone for the orchestration of data, transactions, processes, and insights across the diverse corporate portfolio, e.g. application modernization, technology debt reduction, efficient data exchange, enterprise integration, automated business processes, and agentic-AI.

Unit Context

The Corporate Digital Backbone unit serves as both the steward and transformation catalyst for the World Bank Group’s broad corporate technology portfolio of approximately 170 applications. This diverse landscape—spanning on-premises enterprise‑class ERP systems, cloud‑based SaaS offerings, specialized vendor tools, and custom solutions built on multiple stacks—forms the digital backbone of the institution’s corporate functions. The unit guides the modernization, consolidation, and integration of these systems to create a unified, secure, and future‑ready application ecosystem. The unit provides application frameworks and digital capabilities for the product teams across the department to leverage for accelerated delivery. The four teams that fall under this unit include:

- Application Portfolio Management: Takes a portfolio approach to managing the lifecycles of a diverse and complex set of corporate applications and platforms, with a focus on introducing standardization, driving efficiency, managing technical debt, and mitigating risk.

- Application Delivery Productivity: Optimizes corporate application development and developer productivity by mainstreaming modern development tools, application frameworks, cloud-native practices, DevOps, AI, and agile approaches to maximize velocity, quality, productivity, and efficiency.

- Analytics & AI for Corporate: Delivers data and analytics capabilities for corporate functions that enable data-driven decision-making, embedded machine learning, and AI capabilities consistently and efficiently across all products in the corporate portfolio.

- Corporate Autonomous Platform: Delivers enterprise integration capabilities for the orchestration of data, transactions, processes, and insights across the corporate portfolio to enable efficient data exchange, automated business processes, and a unified view of operations.

Balancing operational stability with an agenda for bold renewal of the corporate application portfolio, the unit will harness modern development practices, platform unification, advanced integration, and automation to deliver resilient and interconnected capabilities. By embedding data, analytics, and AI into the fabric of the corporate application portfolio—and by driving developer efficiency through agile methods, streamlined DevOps pipelines, low/no/pro‑code tooling, and AI‑enabled coding—the unit will enable intelligent decision‑making, faster delivery, and greater organizational agility. Alongside modernization, the unit will proactively manage technology risk and reduce technical debt to safeguard performance and ensure sustainability over time. The use of the “autonomous backbone” and responsible agentic-AI will streamline and connect corporate functions and empower the WBG with timely insights, improved interoperability, and the technology agility required to drive innovation, efficiency, and sustained mission impact across the WBG’s corporate landscape.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Manager, Corporate Digital Backbone leads the modernization and unification of the World Bank Group’s approximately 170 corporate applications—spanning ERP, SaaS, PaaS, vendor, and custom solutions—into a secure, interoperable, and future‑ready ecosystem that powers an autonomous backbone for WBG corporate functions. The Manager drives portfolio consolidation, platform standardization, advanced integration, and disciplined risk management to reduce technical debt and enhance resilience. By scaling agile, DevOps, CI/CD, low/no/pro‑code, automated testing, and AI‑assisted development, the Manager increases developer efficiency, improves service quality, and embeds data, analytics, and AI for intelligent decision‑making across the corporate portfolio.

The Manager will work closely with the Director and other Managers in the WBG Corporate Solutions department to ensure business transformation priorities, product and systems development, and technology capabilities are aligned and connected to maximize impact, efficiency, and value. The Manager will also closely coordinate with the Technology Office, Office of Information Security, and the Data Technology Office of the WBG to leverage enterprise standards and practices. The primary roles and responsibilities for this position include:

Leadership & Strategic Planning

- Guide the technology direction for the WBG's corporate application portfolio through the creation of a strategic roadmap for unifying, modernizing, and optimizing the portfolio to enhance agility, manage risk, increase efficiency, and reduce cost.

- Partner with business leaders and technology stakeholders to generate thought leadership, strengthen engagement, and co-create technology priorities for the corporate portfolio consistent with leading technology governance and investment frameworks (e.g. SAFe LPM).

Application Modernization, Delivery Efficiency, & Autonomous Backbone

- Create structured application modernization roadmaps for WBG corporate functions that sequence transformation priorities, manage interdependencies across applications, and identify cross-cutting areas for maximum institutional impact.

- Lead the lifecycle management of approximately 170 corporate applications — from legacy on‑premises systems, cloud‑based SaaS platforms, and custom builds — ensuring they remain robust, secure, audit-ready, and fit‑for‑purpose during their modernization.

- Ensure the optimization of application development and maintenance practices for the corporate portfolio by driving the adoption of modern tools and processes, including AI‑assisted development, process automation, and real‑time analytics, to measure and enhance developer productivity, application delivery efficiency, and business value

- Embed data, analytics, and AI into the fabric of the application portfolio to streamline deployment across all 170 products and services, eliminating duplication, and accelerating business velocity and value.

- Oversee system integration, unified data flows, and architectural simplification to create a secure, interoperable, and autonomous backbone — powered by automation and agentic-AI — that supports consistent, intelligent operations across the WBG corporate portfolio.

- Achieve delivery excellence and ensure all portfolio initiatives, including the capital budget program, are managed to budget, timelines, and expected quality standards by understanding, quantifying and communicating impact, milestones, interdependence and value measures and playing a leadership role in managing risk, removing impediments, and ensuring interventions and escalations are meeting the overarching goals of the organization.

- Implement strong governance and proactive risk management to safeguard corporate application health, reduce technical debt, and ensure that the modernized ecosystem remains resilient, scalable, and adaptive to evolving business priorities.

People Management & Culture Leadership

- Form and develop a high‑performing, globally distributed team (Washington, Chennai, Sofia, Singapore, and other locations), setting clear objectives, coaching for growth, and enabling career development and succession planning.

- Increase organizational resilience by equipping staff with the mindsets, tools, and support systems needed to adapt to continuous changes, maintain productivity under uncertainty, and recover quickly from disruption. Emphasize innovation as a skill, a growth mindset, urgency, transparency and accountability in all that is done.

- Foster a psychologically safe, trust-based environment where feedback and diverse perspectives are encouraged and valued.

- Serve as a core member of the ITS management team, actively contributing to strategic planning and cross-organizational transformation initiatives. Fulfill fiduciary responsibilities, including cost optimization, budget management, and staff development.

Within the first year, this leader will deliver the following:

- Build the Corporate Digital Backbone capability and team.

- Deliver an application lifecycle management, risk reduction, and technical debt mitigation plan for the department's diverse application portfolio.

- Deliver quantifiable productivity improvements in the developer workforce, including through automation, no/low/pro code, and AI adoption.

- Begin the integration of modern digital capabilities, including data, automation, and AI, into the ten largest business solutions in the department's application portfolio.

- Define the autonomous backbone and agentic-AI framework for the corporate applications portfolio and work with other units in the department to leverage it across value chains, processes, and products.

- Successfully deliver the capital program assigned to the unit.

- Establish well functioning teams within the unit and effective collaboration across the department.

Selection Criteria

In addition to having a strong work ethic and unquestionable integrity, the selected leader will have the presence to establish immediate credibility with managers, peers, and a complex group of stakeholders. They will possess outstanding intellect, leadership and analytical abilities as well as excellent interpersonal, communication and presentation skills. A successful candidate will possess qualifications such as:

* Master’s degree in computer science or related disciplines, and post-graduate coursework or certification in digital transformation, application delivery, software architecture, systems design, and technology management, with at least ten years of experience in a global IT organization, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

* Ten-plus years in leadership roles in application delivery, software architecture, enterprise integration, and technology management for large global enterprises, ideally working on corporate business solutions (human resources, budget and planning, corporate procurement, employee engagement, etc).

* Proven expertise with application modernization strategies, including portfolio rationalization, application lifecycle management, legacy system transformation, cloud adoption, and platform integration.

* Proven expertise with modern developer tools, application frameworks, cloud-native practices, DevOps, agile approaches (agile, DevOps, CI/CD, low‑/no‑code, AI-assisted development), and automation at scale, that yield measurable improvements in developer productivity and application efficiency.

* Proven expertise in managing line of business data and analytics functions to ensure robust, secure, and fit for purpose data governance, management, and use in corporate systems containing sensitive data, e.g. personnel or budget data.

* Experience with machine learning and AI technologies and their use in business applications.

* Proven expertise with enterprise integration platforms that can connect and orchestrate disparate software systems, applications, and data to work together seamlessly, enabling efficient data exchange, automated business processes, and a unified view of operations. 

* Deep experience with enterprise software, such as Oracle PeopleSoft ERP, SAP ERP, Microsoft Power Platform, Adobe

* Experience Platform, SaaS solutions, Azure, AWS, Google, and other leading enterprise cloud platforms and technologies.

* Proven track record managing risk, business continuity, security, and compliance for critical business systems; ensuring safety, reliability, and efficient operations, including governance and change management; and managing and passing audits (e.g. ICFR).

* Proven experience leading multidisciplinary, technical, distributed teams and vendors, building high-performance cultures focused on impact, iteration, and continuous improvement with global scaled agile IT delivery model.

* Proven ability to effectively partner with technology stakeholders and vendors to build strong partnerships, foster good governance, ensure strategic business/IT alignment, and transform relationships.

* Strong collaborator with outstanding interpersonal and diplomatic skills, including the ability to facilitate, negotiate, and influence successful outcomes. Ability to influence decision makers through collaboration, education, and working partnerships. 

* Strong business acumen and judgment—able to simplify complex concepts, prioritize investments for value, and deliver results under pressure.

* A deep passion for the mission of the WBG.

Certifications

Required:

- Leading SAFe SAFe Agilist (SA)

- SAFe Agile Software Engineer (ASE)

- Solutions Architecture Certifications (e.g. AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect)

Preferred:

- SAFe for Architects (ARCH)

- SAFe DevOps Practitioner (SDP)

- SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE)

- Certified Agile Practitioner (e.g. SAFe, Scrum Master)

- SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM)

- Lean Portfolio Management (SAFe LPM)

The World Bank Group values diversity and encourages all qualified candidates who are nationals of World Bank Group member countries to apply, regardless of gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.  Sub-Saharan African nationals, Caribbean nationals, and female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.