Strategy & Innovation Manager - Technology - Consulting

About The Role: The Strategy & Innovation Manager is a core member of the Security Centre of Excellence (CoE) and acts as a transformation catalyst for the bank's cybersecurity function. Working closely with the Head of CoE, the role bearer combines structured strategic thinking with a hands-on execution mindset - scanning forward-looking security trends, generating well-structured proposals, reimagining existing processes, shaping new capability builds, and driving initiatives end-to-end across ISG, IT and business teams. The role requires intellectual curiosity, the ability to frame ambiguous problems into clear, evidence-based proposals, and the ability to influence without direct authority across functions and seniority levels. Key Responsibilities: Emerging Trends & Opportunity Analysis: - Scan and synthesize forward-looking security trends, technologies and regulatory developments relevant to the bank (e.g., AI security, cyber risk quantification etc.) - Produce briefs on emerging-trends and horizon-scanning reports - Benchmark the bank's cyber posture against BFSI peers and global standards (NIST, ISO, RBI mandates), and identify whitespace opportunities and capability gaps Innovation & Process Transformation: - Support the CoE Head in maintaining and refining the multi-year cybersecurity strategy and roadmap - Help define the target state for new cyber capabilities the bank needs to build (e.g., AI SOC, AI security) and shape the plan to get there - Build business cases and investment rationale for new capabilities or tooling, and design proof-of-concept frameworks to test them before scaling - Identify friction points, redundancies and manual steps in existing security processes Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Collaboration: - Collaborate with ISG, IT and business stakeholders to design and implement future-state processes - Manage assigned initiative workstreams end-to-end: planning, stakeholder coordination, milestone tracking, and issue resolution - Work with IT and business teams to align initiatives with business priorities and ensure timely, cross-functional delivery Budgeting & Investment Support: - Support the CoE Head in building and managing the annual cybersecurity budget; help track actuals against budget and prepare forecasts and reallocations - Develop ROI analysis to prioritize and allocate funding across cyber initiatives - Support coordination with Finance and Procurement on approvals Performance Monitoring: - Track and report measurable impact of process and capability changes post-implementation - Define the right KRIs to measure, build dashboards, and ensure the function operates with a clear data-backed view of performance - Establish feedback loops so that learnings from implemented initiatives inform future strategy Secondary Responsibilities: - Build and maintain knowledge repositories on emerging cyber topics - Promote security-awareness culture across the bank through campaigns and structured engagement - Coordinate with vendors, external experts and industry forums to gather inputs, benchmarks and emerging practice that feed the CoE's work Experience: - Good experience across diverse sectors, functions, or roles, with a track record of strategy, innovation, or transformation work; experience within BFSI preferred (non-mandatory) - Demonstrated ability in structured problem-solving, process improvement, and end-to-end initiative delivery; experience in banking, fintech, or cybersecurity is a plus but not mandatory Skills & Competencies: - Strong structured thinking: ability to frame ambiguous problems and develop clear, evidence-based proposals - Effective communicator - able to distil complex cyber topics into crisp, board-ready narratives - Self-starter with high ownership mindset; comfortable operating with limited supervision - Collaborative stakeholder management skills, with ability to influence across functions and seniority levels - Curiosity and learning agility - stays current with industry trends, evolving GenAI technologies and best practice