AVP, Principal Product Engineer (L11)

Job Description:

Role Title:  AVP, Principal Product Engineer (L11)

Company Overview:  

Synchrony (NYSE: SYF) is a premier consumer financial services company delivering one of the industry’s most complete digitally enabled product suites. Our experience, expertise and scale encompass a broad spectrum of industries including digital, health and wellness, retail, telecommunications, home, auto, outdoors, pet and more.

• We have recently been ranked #2 among India’s Best Companies to Work for by Great Place to Work. We were among the Top 50 India’s Best Workplaces in Building a Culture of Innovation by All by GPTW and Top 25 among Best Workplaces in BFSI by GPTW. We have also been recognized by Ambition Box Employee Choice Awards among the Top 20 Mid-Sized Companies, ranked #3 among Top Rated Companies for Women, and Top-Rated Financial Services Companies.

• We provide best-in-class employee benefits and programs that cater to work-life integration and overall well-being.

• We provide career advancement and upskilling opportunities for all to take up leadership roles.

Role Summary/Purpose:

The AVP, Principal Product Engineer serves as a senior technical authority within SAS Platform Administration, with end-to-end accountability for the operational health and ongoing evolution of the SAS Viya 4 platform hosted on AWS using EKS. The scope of the role includes hands-on platform administration and engineering across upgrades, configuration management, performance and availability, incident response, and advanced troubleshooting. The position also drives cloud-native integration and modernization efforts, ensuring the platform aligns with enterprise architecture standards and delivers resilient, scalable, and supportable services for business consumption.

In addition, the role has broad ownership of automation and operational excellence, including advancing CI/CD and infrastructure/configuration-as-code practices to improve release reliability, reduce manual effort, and standardize deployments. The AVP partners closely with Cloud Engineering, Network, Security, Data Protection, and Architecture teams to implement and sustain required controls such as encryption, secrets management, logging/monitoring, and IAM least-privilege. While not a people-manager role, the position provides delivery leadership as an Agile Technical Lead, coordinating consultants and team contributors to plan and execute sprint commitments, manage dependencies and risks, and ensure outcomes meet quality, documentation, and operational readiness expectations.

Organizational Overview:

Synchrony Engineering: Application & Enterprise Architecture (A&EA)

Synchrony Engineering’s Application & Enterprise Architecture (A&EA) organization provides the architectural leadership and governance needed to design, evolve, and simplify Synchrony’s technology landscape. A&EA partners with product, engineering, security, data, and infrastructure teams to ensure that solutions are business-aligned, scalable, secure, resilient, and cost-effective, while reducing complexity and accelerating delivery.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own day-to-day administration, operations, troubleshooting, and continuous improvement for SAS Viya 4 on AWS/EKS, ensuring stability, performance, and secure operations.

• Administer and support SAS Viya 4, including upgrades/patching, configuration management, and creation/maintenance of operational runbooks and standard operating procedures.

• Design, implement, and support cloud-native integrations and services including AWS EKS, RDS, IAM, S3, KMS, Route 53, and Redshift (or equivalent services as applicable).

• Architect and implement SAS Viya deployments aligned to core module deployment patterns in AWS, including HA/resilience, networking, security, scalability, and operational monitoring considerations.

• Drive DevOps automation for build/deploy/release processes using Jenkins, uDeploy, and GitHub (including branching strategies, pull request reviews, and release tagging).

• Develop, standardize, and enforce infrastructure and configuration-as-code practices; design and customize reusable Terraform modules/patterns where applicable to enable governed deployments.

• Support and integrate enterprise identity and access management patterns, including OKTA and Single Sign-On (SSO), and align with Active Directory and enterprise authorization standards.

• Partner with Cloud, Network, Security, Data Protection, and Architecture teams to implement platform controls (e.g., encryption standards, secrets handling, KMS usage, IAM least privilege, logging/monitoring).

• Work with enterprise tools and integrations such as StoneBranch, Protegrity, Active Directory, and Unix filesystem standards/controls to meet operational and compliance requirements.

• Provide advanced troubleshooting and root cause analysis across Kubernetes/EKS, SAS Viya services, network/DNS, storage, and identity integrations; document findings and preventive actions.

• Support cloud migration and modernization initiatives, including environment readiness, cutover planning, validation, and operational handover to support teams.

• Serve as Agile Technical Lead: lead technical planning for sprint work, clarify requirements, define technical approaches, estimate effort, and identify dependencies/risks early.

• Coordinate and guide resources/consultants (without direct people management) to deliver sprint commitments; delegate tasks, remove blockers, and ensure quality outcomes.

• Maintain transparent delivery execution: track work items in the team board, provide status updates to Product Owner and Scrum Master, and actively participate in all Scrum events.

• Promote engineering best practices: peer reviews, automation coding standards, documentation, operational readiness checks, and change management adherence.

Qualifications/Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree with minimum 8 years of IT experience or in lieu of degree, High School Diploma/GED and 7 years of IT experience

• Hands-on SAS Viya 4 administration on AWS with EKS deployment, including installation, operations, upgrades/patching, and troubleshooting.

• Hands-on experience with AWS services such as EKS, RDS, IAM, S3, KMS, Route 53, and Redshift (or equivalent cloud-native technologies).

• DevOps and CI/CD experience using Jenkins and uDeploy; source control and collaboration using GitHub (branching strategies, pull request reviews, release tagging).

• Experience integrating enterprise identity solutions including OKTA and Single Sign-On (SSO); familiarity with Active Directory alignment and access control patterns.

• Ability to architect and implement SAS Viya solutions in AWS based on core module deployment patterns, including resilience/HA, security, networking, scalability, and monitoring.

• Experience with enterprise integrations and operational controls such as StoneBranch, Protegrity, Active Directory, and Unix filesystem standards/practices.

• Delivery leadership in an Agile/Scrum model, including coordinating consultants/resources (without direct people management), communicating status/risks, and driving technical outcomes.

Desired Characteristics:

The ideal candidate combines deep platform engineering skills with pragmatic delivery leadership, strong documentation habits, and a security-first mindset.

• Demonstrated ability to translate architecture and security requirements into implementable sprint-level technical work.

• Strong incident management and problem-solving skills, including structured root cause analysis and prevention-oriented follow-ups.

• Proven experience improving operational maturity through runbooks, automation, monitoring, and standardized change practices.

• Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Comfort working across cross-functional teams and vendors, building alignment on standards, timelines, and delivery expectations.

• High ownership mindset with a focus on reliability, predictability, and continuous improvement through retrospectives and measurable action items.

• Quality-first engineering approach: peer reviews, disciplined Git workflows, and consistent documentation as part of the definition of done.

Eligibility Criteria:

Bachelor's degree with minimum 8 years of IT experience or in lieu of degree, High School Diploma/GED and 7 years of IT experience.

Work Timings:  3PM to 12 AM IST

This role qualifies for Enhanced Flexibility offered in Synchrony India and will require the incumbent to be available between 06:00 AM Eastern Time – 11:30 AM Eastern Time (timings are anchored to US Eastern hours and will adjust twice a year locally). This window is for meetings with India and US teams. The remaining hours will be flexible for the employee to choose. Exceptions may apply periodically due to business needs) We are proud to offer flexibility at Synchrony. Our way of working allows you the option to work from home or workspaces in our Regional Engagement Hubs—Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, or Delhi/NCR. Occasionally you may be required to commute or travel to Hyderabad or one of the Regional Engagement Hubs for in person engagement activities such as business or team meetings, trainings, and culture events.

For Internal Applicants:

• Understand the criteria or mandatory skills required for the role, before applying

• Inform your manager and HRM before applying for any role on Workday

• Ensure that your professional profile is updated (fields such as education, prior experience, other skills) and it is mandatory to upload your updated resume (Word or PDF format)

• Must not be any corrective action plan (First Formal/Final Formal, LPP)

• Level 9+ employees who have completed 18 months in the organization and 12 months in current role and level are only eligible

• L9+ Employees can apply

Grade/Level: 11

Job Family Group:

Information Technology