IT Technical Lead - Card Issuing

Role overview

Card issuing ownership

• Own the Card Management System, issuer processing, and connected card platforms.
• Own technology requirements across the full debit, credit, prepaid, physical, and virtual card lifecycle.
• Validate authorization, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, financial posting, routing, EMV, 3D Secure, tokenization, wallets, ATM/POS, and e-commerce behavior.

Jaywan delivery

• Lead end-to-end technology delivery and ongoing support for Jaywan co-badged card issuing products.
• Coordinate the Bank, Jaywan/AEP, international schemes, processors, CMS providers, personalization bureaus, and technology partners.
• Translate Jaywan, scheme, and regulatory specifications into complete Bank requirements.
• Coordinate certification, testing, production simulation, readiness, defect closure, and technical troubleshooting.

Analysis and project coordination

• Gather and document requirements through workshops with Cards, Operations, Product, Digital Banking, Compliance, Risk, Fraud, Finance, and Security stakeholders.
• Prepare BRDs, functional specifications, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, sequence diagrams, data mappings, interface requirements, and business rules.
• Coordinate projects and change requests through implementation and hypercare, including plans, milestones, RAID logs, status reports, and escalations.
• Coordinate SIT, UAT, certification, release approvals, deployment, smoke testing, and handover to support teams.

Vendors and production support

• Coordinate card schemes, processors, CMS, 3DS, tokenization, personalization, fraud, and digital-wallet providers.
• Track vendor commitments, SLA performance, defects, root-cause actions, documentation, and knowledge transfer.
• Lead significant card-related production incidents and analyze messages, logs, API traces, and system behavior.
• Drive restoration, root-cause identification, permanent remediation, monitoring improvements, and control enhancements.

Testing and governance

• Define end-to-end test scope and ensure positive, negative, exception, reversal, reconciliation, regression, and production smoke cases are covered.
• Manage defects through prioritization, technical clarification, retesting, and closure.
• Prepare change requests, impact assessments, implementation and rollback plans, approvals, and production validation steps.
• Maintain architecture, interface, configuration, transaction-flow, support, and operational handover documentation.

Required domain and technical knowledge

• Card issuing, card lifecycle management, Jaywan and UAE domestic card schemes, and Visa and/or Mastercard issuer processing.
• Debit, credit, prepaid, physical, and virtual cards, including authorization, clearing, settlement, and reconciliation.
• ISO 8583, EMV, 3D Secure, card tokenization, digital wallets, and issuer-side provisioning or integration.
• APIs, REST/SOAP, JSON/XML, middleware, API gateways, SQL, logs, and API testing tools such as Postman.
• Jira, Confluence, or equivalent delivery platforms, plus process modelling and technical documentation tools such as Visio.
• Direct Jaywan co-badged implementation experience is highly desirable.

Security and compliance

• Ensure compliance with applicable UAE Central Bank requirements and Bank policies.
• Align card solutions with PCI DSS, PCI PIN, EMV, 3DS, scheme security, data-protection, and information-security standards.
• Ensure sensitive cardholder data, cryptographic keys, credentials, and transaction information follow applicable security standards and governance.