Johnson Zhou

Results-driven professional with strong ownership and the ability to excel in fast-paced environments. Currently spearheading a multi-million-dollar digitalization project for SLA, managing cross-functional teams and vendors to ensure on-time delivery, quality improvements, and operational efficiency, while implementing best practices to enhance system reliability and service delivery.

Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Team Management:

• Spearhead a multi-disciplinary team comprising project manager, business analysts, solution architect, and cloud infrastructure engineer
• Manage a vendor team of 100+ members, ensuring smooth coordination and timely project delivery

Project & Budget Management:

• Develop and manage project budgets, ensuring cost-effective resource allocation
• Lead end-to-end IT project delivery, from planning to execution, ensuring alignment with business goals

Technical Oversight & Agile Delivery:

• Oversee software development, system implementation, and cloud infrastructure deployment
• Facilitate Agile/Scrum and DevSecOps practices to optimize delivery processes and operational workflows, remove bottlenecks, and ensure delivery and operation excellence

Stakeholder & Vendor Engagement:

• Act as the primary liaison between technical teams and business stakeholders
• Negotiate contracts and service agreements with vendors while managing the outsourced IT teams

Compliance, Governance & Performance Tracking:

• Ensure adherence to IT security policies, governance frameworks, and regulatory requirements
• Track KPIs and service metrics, drive process improvements, and provide regular status reports to senior management

Achievements:

• Rescued a Delayed Project & Restored Execution Excellence – Led the turnaround of a struggling project facing severe delays and poor quality, working closely with the team to stabilize execution, improve deliverables, and ensure on-time completion
• Implemented Robust Software Engineering Practices – Established and enforced industry best practices, including CI/CD pipelines with SAST, DAST, container/dependency scanning, as well as unit testing and automated testing, significantly enhancing code quality and system security
• Cross-Agency Knowledge Sharing & Best Practice Adoption – Actively shared key learnings and successful implementation strategies with other projects across multiple agencies, driving improvements in software development standards and project execution efficiency

I led system development, enhancements, and operational support for Regulatory Reporting, AML/KYC, and Credit Processing & Loan Management systems. I drove end-to-end project management, business analysis, system solution, and vendor collaboration while ensuring compliance with security and regulatory policies. I oversaw system stability, strengthened controls, streamlined processes, and resolved critical issues, improved efficiency, reliability, and compliance.

Responsibilities:

• Led and managed projects and system enhancements for Regulatory Reporting, AML/KYC, and Credit Processing & Loan Management systems.
• Acted as a Lead Business Analyst, understanding business requirements, identifying pain points, and driving feasibility studies with IT teams to propose effective solutions.
• Oversaw end-to-end project management, working closely with project managers from vendor IT partners, covering project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure.
• Collaborated with PMO to define and optimize the Project Management Framework and System Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
• Served as the system owner, ensuring all enhancements complied with security policies, infrastructure requirements, and compliance standards.
• Strengthened system controls, working with vendors to enhance security measures and enforce compliance with CISO and InfoSec policies.
• Developed Level 3 support capabilities within vendor teams to improve issue resolution and system stability.
• Led procurement activities, assisting in the conception stage of new projects and supporting RFP/RFQ processes with the procurement team.

Achievements:

• Resolved critical project blockers in the Credit Processing System enhancement within two weeks of joining GLDB, securing stakeholder approval to go live as scheduled
• Fixed major system issues in the AML/KYC system within six weeks, earning recognition from Business Units and Compliance teams
• Standardized project planning by creating structured process flows and document templates, improving efficiency and consistency across projects

Led the transformation of an in-house development team of 9 developers into a 20-member matrixed team, incorporating Project Managers, Business Analysts, Solution Architects, and Developers. Expanded capabilities beyond in-house development to include outsourced project management, enhancing efficiency and scalability. Managed the development, maintenance, and delivery of banking applications and medium-to-large-scale projects across APAC, ensuring strategic alignment with business objectives.

Responsibilities:

Strategic Planning & Leadership:

• Worked with system owners in defining and executing the technology roadmap and digitalization strategy, aligning with the organization’s mid-to-long-term IT vision and business needs.
• Managed budgets for system enhancements, upgrades, and new projects, optimizing resource allocation for cost efficiency.
• Led team development efforts, mentoring and training members, identifying skills gaps, and aligning career growth with business objectives.

Project, System & Resource Management:

• Oversaw end-to-end IT project delivery, including planning, execution, stakeholder management, and adherence to SLAs.
• Managed system enhancement development, including impact analysis, solution design, and adherence to SDLC and development standards.
• Optimized team operations, implementing structured processes to improve monthly resource planning, reporting, and task tracking.
• Oversaw the operations and maintenance works for the systems supported by the team, reviewed root cause analysis of system issues and problems, managed the team to perform fixes and improve systems stability

Stakeholder & Vendor Management:

• Liaised with system owners, management, and business teams to ensure project alignment with compliance requirements (e.g., MAS610, IFRS9, DTCC, OECD-CRS).
• Negotiated contracts and evaluated vendors for new projects, ensuring service quality and cost-effectiveness.
• Collaborated with PMO to implement IT policies, governance frameworks, and best practices, following MAS TRM and System Security Management Rules.
• Worked with Crisis Management Committee (CMC) to implement and monitor Business Continuity Planning (BCP) measures.

Governance & Compliance:

• Ensured adherence to regulatory requirements, security policies, and compliance standards across all IT projects.
• Reviewed and improved Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Project Management Process Framework.

Achievements:

• Revamped Team Structure for Enhanced Efficiency – Led the successful transformation of the team into a matrixed operation model, optimizing resource utilization and expanding service offerings, resulting in greater value delivery to the bank
• Optimized Resource Planning & Transparency – Designed and implemented a structured process for task management and resource allocation, significantly improving monthly planning, streamlining reporting, and providing clear visibility to management and stakeholders
• Delivered High-Impact Projects Under Constraints – Successfully managed and delivered three critical projects—Regional Data Warehousing, IFRS9, and MAS610 implementation—despite limited internal resources and tight deadlines, ensuring regulatory compliance and business continuity
• Seamless System Migration & Upgrade – Spearheaded the end-to-end migration and upgrade of Core Banking DataMart and Reporting systems across 13+ APAC branches, addressing end-of-life/end-of-support (EOL/EOS) challenges while maintaining operational stability

With over a decade at NCS, I progressed from Software Engineer to Lead Consultant, specializing in system development and software engineering. I led teams in designing, developing, and optimizing enterprise applications for clients like DBS, GIC, and Citibank Asia. My expertise includes solution architecture, requirement analysis, software engineering, full SDLC management, and vendor coordination. I successfully delivered major system upgrades, infrastructure migrations, and automation solutions while ensuring seamless operations and compliance

Responsibilities:

Jul 2015 - Dec 2016 - Lead Consultant, Application:

• Liaised with business users on the requirements, provided solution to automate user's daily processing and solved the day-by-day business problem
• Coordinated with product vendors on new feature development, issue reporting and fixes patching and testing
• Planned and managed the works on enhancement requests, infra changes and corporate database amendments
• Dealt with infra teams for server migrations, vendor product installation, Server/DB patches, Java update and other infra related activities
• Facilitated the workflow for applications release and BAU support model

Jul 2012 - Jun 2015 - Senior Consultant, Application:

• Supported users to analyze the new requirements published by regulator or corporate, proposed and implemented the solution to address the requirements
• Estimated the development effort for users’ requests, prepared the contracts and negotiated with users to finalize the cost for delivery
• Managed and planned the works for all requests from users and assigned the tasks to developers for development
• Developed and monitored the work schedule to ensure timely delivery by development team
• Resolved cross-functional issues at project level
• Reviewed and monitored the development progress to ensure SDLC is followed

Oct 2007 - Jul 2011 - Application Consultant:

• Communicate with customers on the problem definition, performed the requirement analysis, completed functional and technical documents
• Managed and guided the offshore development team for coding, UT, SIT and UAT, reviewed codes and test results
• Worked as L3 for production issues troubleshooting, provided corrective solution (workaround) to recover the system and provided preventive solution (permanent fixes) to solve the issue for good
• Provided training to production support team on any new modules released to production

Jul 2006 - Sep 2007 - Software Engineer:

• Performed the developments works (coding, documentation, Unit Test, SIT, etc.) according to the requirement documents
• Supported UAT and provided fixes and changes for solving the issues reported by users

Achievements:

• Ensured System Stability Amid Resource Constraints – Successfully managed the development and maintenance of the Profit and Loss system for six months without disruptions, despite the absence of dedicated Production Support resources
• Led Successful System Upgrade & Migration – Directed a three-member team to transition the Financial Capital Reporting System from a thick client to a web-based platform, while upgrading servers and databases to the latest versions, resolving EOL/EOS challenges within an eight-month timeline
• Executed Complex Risk Management System Upgrade – Collaborated with product vendors to complete the upgrade of the Investment Risk Management System - spanning 1 Oracle DB on Unix, 4 Calculation Servers on Windows, 1 Qlik View Reporting Server, and 300+ Control-M jobs - within a six-month project timeline, all while ensuring uninterrupted business-as-usual (BAU) operations