JOB SUMMARY

This role could be based in Singapore, China and Philippines. When you start the application process you will be presented with a drop down menu showing all countries, Please ensure that you select a country where the role is based.

We are seeking a dynamic and visionary Director, AI Research & Partnerships to support and a new AI Research and Experimentation team under the bank’s Fit-For-Growth and broader AI Enablement initiatives. This pivotal role will position Standard Chartered as a global leader in AI thought leadership within the financial services industry. The successful candidate will support pioneering AI research, forge strategic research collaborations, secure patents, and contribute to the broader AI ecosystem through impactful publications and innovations. 
RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategy
•    Work with various management to develop and refine the bank's AI strategy, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives.
•    Identify and prioritize AI use cases that have the potential to deliver significant business value.
•    Develop business cases for AI projects, including cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, and ROI estimation.

Business
•    Business Analysts, Business Partners, COO Business, ITO, CDO, internal staff, clients and 3rd parties.

Processes
•    Analyze large datasets to identify trends, patterns, and insights that can inform business decisions and strategy.
•    Collaborate with data science teams to design and implement AI models and algorithms that address specific business needs.
•    Interpret and communicate the results of AI models to business stakeholders, highlighting key insights and recommendations.

Governance

•    Foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement by promoting the benefits of AI and encouraging experimentation.

Regulatory & Business Conduct

•    Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct. 
•    Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.
•    Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.
•    Lead to achieve the outcomes set out in the Bank’s Conduct Principles 

Key Stakeholders

•    Collaborate with business leaders to identify opportunities for AI applications that address key business challenges and drive growth.
•    Facilitate communication between business units and technical teams, ensuring a clear understanding of AI project objectives, requirements, and expected outcomes.
•    Conduct workshops and meetings to gather business requirements and translate them into technical specifications for AI solutions.•    Work with senior management to develop and refine the bank's AI strategy, ensuring alignment with overall business objectives.
•    Identify and prioritize AI use cases that have the potential to deliver significant business value.
Develop business cases for AI projects, including cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, and ROI estimation

Our Ideal Candidate

•    5+ years of experience in a business analysis, project management, or a related role within the banking or financial services industry.
•    Strong understanding of AI and machine learning concepts, with the ability to translate technical information into business language.
•    Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex data and generate actionable insights.
•    Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to effectively convey complex concepts to diverse audiences.
•    Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders.

Role Specific Technical Competencies

• Core programming & ML tooling (Python, C++, SQL, PySpark; TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, XGBoost/LightGBM).
• Statistical & ML fundamentals (feature engineering, validation metrics, bias/variance trade-offs, A/B testing, experiment design)
• Data-engineering literacy (ETL pipelines, API ingestion, batch vs. streaming, Docker/Kubernetes basics)
• MLOps & DevOps practices (CI/CD, model registry, observability)
• Cloud economics & security awareness (GPU sizing, IAM, data-in-transit encryption, cost-efficiency)
• Collaboration & mentorship (leading mixed teams, upskilling juniors, translating research outcomes for stakeholders)
• External research-partnership management (grant proposals, academic collaborations, IP negotiations)
• Advanced NLP & LLM engineering (prompt design, RAG pipelines, agentic-AI frameworks, vector databases)
• End-to-end GenAI solution architecture on cloud (AWS SageMaker/Bedrock, GCP Vertex, EKS auto-scaling, CI/CD for models)
• Domain-specific quant-finance & risk-modelling expertise (Basel PD/LGD/EAD, VaR, option pricing, ESG risk factors)
• Patents / publications pipeline know-how (scoping novel contributions, drafting claims, conference-vs-IP decision making)
• Multilingual & cross-cultural data capability (e.g., English + Chinese/Cantonese; multilingual embeddings)

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.

Recruitment Assessments

Some of our roles use assessments to help us understand how suitable you are for the role you've applied to. If you are invited to take an assessment, this is great news. It means your application has progressed to an important stage of our recruitment process.

Visit our careers website www.sc.com/careers