Vice President, Organizational Design & Optimization

Vice President, Organizational Design & Optimization

SMBC, a prominent global financial institution, has experienced significant growth and success in our journey through the Americas Division (AD). The newly formed Organizational Strategy Center of Excellence (CoE), within HR, will work to align SMBC's structure, talent, culture, and capabilities with business strategy, cost discipline, and growth. We partner across HR, Finance, and Senior Business Leaders to drive organizational design, workforce and capacity planning, and skills and capability development through enterprise scalable, data-informed approaches. Reporting to the Director, Workforce & Organization Strategy, the VP will lead organizational design and operating model projects that enable business performance through role clarity, spans/layers, and governance.

This role will serve as a key thought partner to senior HR and business leaders to make aligned, data-driven decisions using consistent, enterprise-wide methodologies and may lead cross-functional project teams or mentor junior team members. The role will translate strategic insights into actionable design recommendations and lead implementation efforts through to execution and refinement. Success in this role will be measured by the adoption of scalable org design frameworks, improved structural efficiency, and enhanced alignment between business strategy and talent architecture.

Role Objectives

• Drive project engagements, with a primary focus on organizational design initiatives.
• Serve as strategic advisor to senior business leaders, applying enterprise and function strategy to organizational design and operating model efforts.
• Drive strategy and cross-functional alignment to build out repeatable approaches for organizational design, capacity planning, and talent strategies and decisions, in close collaboration with HRBPs, other HR CoEs, and Business Leaders.
• Apply external benchmarking and internal diagnostics to assess role clarity, job fit, and structural effectiveness, enabling data-driven recommendations that enhance performance, agility, and talent outcomes.
• Establish repeatable processes and planning cycles, influencing HR and business leaders of the importance of prioritizing organizational design and ongoing optimization as business needs and talent evolves.
• Guide and leverage new approaches for data-driven planning and modeling tools and processes (such as: Anaplan, OrgVue) to enable proactive, data-driven and value-based, cost-effective decisions.

Qualifications and Skills

• Advanced degree in Human Resources, Organizational Development, Business Administration, or a related field (e.g., MBA, MSOD) preferred.
• 8-12+ years of progressive human capital consulting or HR leadership experience, with a strong focus on organizational design, organizational effectiveness, and strategic transformation.
• Demonstrated expertise in systems thinking and proven success in designing and implementing organizational models and operating models that drive business performance.
• Expertise in designing and implementing future-state structures, including role architecture, governance models, and decision rights frameworks.
• Experience applying org design methodologies such as Galbraith's Star Model, value stream mapping, or capability-based design.
• Deep experience leading change initiatives, including culture change, in complex, matrixed environments, with a strong understanding of change leadership principles and stakeholder engagement.
• Strong analytical and diagnostic skills, with the ability to interpret organizational data and translate insights into actionable strategies and to objectively analyze qualitative data and synthesize insights.
• Exceptional consultative and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders and build trusted partnerships across functions, especially on sensitive org re-design topics.
• Proven ability to diagnose root causes and apply a hypothesis-driven, data-informed approach to facilitate workshops and stakeholder alignment.
• Strong facilitation skills, for group workshops, small group sessions, and 1:1, creating structured approaches and engaging and productive working sessions, with a focus on stakeholder alignment and surfacing potentially unspoken or unaddressed root issues.
• Strong business acumen and proven ability to rapidly develop a deep understanding of business models, team structures, and role accountabilities across diverse functions, to advise senior leaders on optimal job design, organizational structure, and operating model alignment.
• Experience with Banking and/or heavily regulated Financial Services environments and/or Japanese HQ company experience a plus.
• Commitment to fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace culture.
• Embody and promote the organization's core values in all initiatives and leadership behaviors.

Who Will Succeed in This Role

You might be an ideal candidate if you:

• Thrive in ambiguity and are energized by building from the ground up. You're excited by the opportunity to be part of a new team, and you bring the structure, creativity, and resilience needed to create recommendations and ideate new solutions.
• Drive change with patience and pragmatism. You know how to influence new approaches, while pacing change to bring others along. You understand driving new approaches in a regulated, culturally nuanced org requires influence, trust-building, and incremental wins.
• Have strong business acumen and a systems mindset. You see the big picture and understand how business strategy translates to organizational strategy and design. You use data and insights to guide decisions and anticipate future needs.
• Are a relationship builder and cross-functional influencer. You excel at building credibility with senior leaders and peers across functions to build demand and motivate action. You know how to navigate a matrixed environment and gain alignment on sensitive topics without formal authority. You know how to translate complex methodologies into approachable language and educate and influence others.
• Balance compliance with innovation. You're experienced in regulated industries and understand how to drive change while honoring legal, risk, and cultural considerationsespecially in a Japanese corporate context.

Who This Role is Not For

This role may not be a good fit if:

• You prefer a steady-state environment. If you're most comfortable with well-established processes and predictable routines with low ambiguity, the newness of this role and team may feel misaligned.
• You have focused only on strategy OR execution. This role requires the ability to both set strategy and design on org design initiatives, but also drive through to execution and ongoing refinement. If you have focused only on one or the other, the learning curve to work across the full spectrum of effort may be too significant.
• You avoid financial and data-driven decision-making. This role requires comfort with analytics, pattern recognition, detailed cost analysis and ability to balance financial and people objectives, using insights to shape strategy and influence stakeholders.

Additional Requirements

SMBC's employees participate in a Hybrid workforce model that provides employees with an opportunity to work from home, as well as, from an SMBC office. SMBC requires that employees live within a reasonable commuting distance of their office location. Prospective candidates will learn more about their specific hybrid work schedule during their interview process. Hybrid work may not be permitted for certain roles, including, for example, certain FINRA-registered roles for which in-office attendance for the entire workweek is required.

SMBC provides reasonable accommodations during candidacy for applicants with disabilities consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application process, please let us know at accommodations@smbcgroup.com.