Job Summary

This role will be reporting to the Executive Director, AI Safety & AI Talent and sitting within the CDO office of the bank. The Head of Model Validation Team is responsible for leading the validation of machine learning (ML), data science, and Generative AI (GenAI) models, ensuring alignment with recent technical advancements, regulatory requirements, and established Model Risk Management (MRM) frameworks. The role involves overseeing the development and implementation of robust validation methodologies for AI and non-AI models, ensuring compliance, accuracy, and reliability across the organization’s model portfolio.

About our Technology & Operations Team

Our Technology & Operations (T&O) team is the powerhouse for the Bank. We aim to go further, faster, to ensure we're agile and ready for tomorrow, today. Our diverse network enables us to innovate and build banking solutions that support communities to prosper. We're a place where talented people are encouraged to grow, learn, and thrive, to drive their own career journeys, to reach their full potential. 

When you work with us, you’re protecting the reputation and legacy of a 170 year organisation and building on it. We’re driven by progress and continuously evolving to ensure we’re agile and ready for tomorrow, today.  

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and establish a team of model validation professionals, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and regulatory compliance.
• Develop and execute a strategic vision for model validation that incorporates emerging trends in ML, data science, and GenAI.
• Align validation practices with organizational objectives and industry best practices, including MRM frameworks.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including data science, risk management, and compliance, to ensure cohesive model governance.
• Design and implement comprehensive validation frameworks for ML, data science, and GenAI models, leveraging recent technical advancements (e.g., explainable AI, fairness metrics, and robustness testing).
• Ensure validation methodologies align with existing MRM practices for non-AI models, including statistical and financial models, while addressing unique challenges of AI models (e.g., black-box nature, data drift, and ethical considerations).
• Develop and maintain validation standards, policies, and procedures to ensure consistency and rigor across all model types.
• Incorporate regulatory requirements (e.g., SR 11-7, Basel, GDPR, and AI-specific regulations like the EU AI Act) into validation processes.
• Oversee the evaluation of model performance, including accuracy, stability, scalability, and fairness, using advanced techniques such as stress testing, backtesting, and sensitivity analysis.
• Assess model interpretability and explainability, ensuring alignment with stakeholder and regulatory expectations.
• Monitor and validate data quality, feature engineering, and preprocessing pipelines to mitigate biases and ensure model reliability.
• Ensure model validation practices comply with global regulatory standards and guidelines, including those specific to AI and emerging technologies.
• Integrate MRM principles, such as model inventory management, risk tiering, and documentation, into AI model validation workflows.
• Identify and mitigate model risks, including operational, ethical, and reputational risks, associated with ML and GenAI deployments.
• Prepare and present validation reports to senior management, auditors, and regulators, ensuring transparency and accountability

Our Ideal Candidate

Skills and Experience

• 10+ years of overall relevant working experience in FSI domain
• 5+ years of experience in model validation, risk management, or data science
• Deep expertise in ML, data science, and GenAI models, including knowledge of frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and techniques (e.g., NLP, computer vision).
• Strong understanding of MRM frameworks and regulatory guidelines (e.g., SR 11-7, OCC, Basel, EU AI Act).
• Proven ability to lead teams, manage complex projects, and engage with senior stakeholders.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate technical findings into actionable insights.
• Familiarity with programming languages (e.g., Python, R) and validation tools (e.g., SHAP, LIME, Fairlearn).

Qualifications

Relevant degree qualification preferred 

Role Specific Technical Competencies

• Model Validation
• Risk Management 
• Data Science

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