EVP, Development & Automation

About Vistra

Vistra is a leading provider of essential business services to help companies and private capital funds grow across the entire business and investment lifecycle. We work with nearly half of the Fortune Global 500, managing more than 200,000 legal entities, and working with two-thirds of the Private Equity International (PEI) 300.

Vistra is owned by BPEA EQT, the Asian private equity arm of EQT, which is the 3rd largest PE fund globally. We are currently in an exciting phase of accelerated growth and digitally powered transformation, driven by a bold vision and a dynamic executive leadership team. As we transform to become fully digital & AI powered, scale our operations and evolve our business model, we are investing in our people and culture, injecting and cultivating the skills and capabilities needed to support our future focused transformation and growth plans while ensuring we remain agile, innovative, and client focused.

Vistra operates across two primary client groups:

• Vistra Funds Services (VFS) focuses on supporting Funds clients (Private Equity; Real Estate and Private Credit) through the delivery of Funds Administration; Investor Onboarding; AIFM; Depositary and similar offerings, and
• Vistra Global Solutions (VGS) which is focused on Corporate (and corporate like) clients through the delivery of such offerings as Company Incorporations; Legal Entity Management & Compliance services; Financial Accounting and Tax services and Payroll and Payments services.

As Vistra scales and evolves toward a platform-led, AI-enabled operating model, software engineering and automation are critical to:

• Enabling non-linear growth,
• Improving control and resilience,
• Reducing manual effort and operational risk,
• Differentiating client experience.

Development and automation at Vistra are not IT support capabilities—they are core engines of productivity, margin, and service quality.

Role Purpose

The EVP, Development & Automation is accountable for leading Vistra's global software development, platform engineering, and intelligent automation agenda. This role defines how engineering and automation are embedded across both Enterprise Technologies and Business Applications, enabling faster delivery, stronger controls, and scalable operations.

This is a hands-on executive leadership role responsible for outcomes—not experimentation—across development velocity, automation impact, and operational efficiency.

Key Responsibilities

Development Strategy & Engineering Leadership

• Define and execute Vistra's global software development strategy, aligned with business priorities, strategic technology needs and global delivery requirements to support and underpin business value.
• Establish modern engineering standards, frameworks, and secure coding practices that underpin all development that happens across Vistra globally.
• Lead global development teams across regions, driving platform-centric, agile, and secure by design delivery models.
• Govern the SDLC, ensuring architectural alignment, code quality, reuse, and lifecycle discipline.
• Align coding practices around AI tools, define and manage usage across Vistra and provide guardrails for operations and usage to ensure the safety and security of data across the enterprise.

Automation & Digital Enablement

• Define and deliver a group-wide automation strategy.
• Lead RPA, workflow automation, and intelligent automation initiatives across IT and business functions prioritizing against revenue (top line growth), simplification and productivity (bottom line efficiencies)
• Identify automation opportunities that reduce manual effort, drive business value, strengthen controls, and improve throughput.
• Deploy low-code / no-code platforms where appropriate without compromising governance.
• Build a measurable automation backlog tied to productivity, risk reduction, and cost / benefit outcomes clearly defined.
• Drive 2 week sprints and focused execution and build a sustainable automation pipeline across all applications and platforms to industrialize automation across the enterprise.
• Focused on delivering the automation agenda across the enterprise, this includes migrating all use cases off legacy RPA / Automations tools and on to new automation platforms
• Building re-usable code and agentic agents with skills that can be re-used across the enterprise

DevOps & Platform Engineering

• Champion infrastructure-as-code, automated testing, and release automation.
• Build shared engineering platforms that accelerate development velocity and consistency.
• Establish observability, performance monitoring, and reliability standards.
• Improve release management discipline and deployment resilience across environments.

Emerging Technology & Engineering Innovation

• Leverage AI-assisted and GenAI-enabled development tools to increase developer productivity.
• Drive innovation in engineering efficiency, developer experience, and digital workflows.
• Establish clear engineering metrics to track speed, quality, reliability, and business impact.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Embed DevSecOps and secure-by-design principles across the development lifecycle.
• Ensure automation and development solutions meet data privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.
• Partner with Risk, Security, and Architecture to maintain robust controls without slowing delivery.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management

• Partner with business and IT leadership to prioritise development and automation initiatives.
• Manage vendors, platforms, and system integrators aligned to Vistra standards.
• Own budgeting, cost optimisation, and investment strategy for development and automation tooling.

Leadership & Capability Building

• Build and develop high-performing global development and automation teams.
• Attract, retain, and grow senior engineering talent.
• Foster a culture of accountability, continuous learning, and delivery excellence.
• Develop succession plans and long-term capability roadmaps.

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)

The EVP will be accountable for delivering the following critical outcomes:

1. Make Automation a Scalable Growth Lever

• Reduce reliance on linear headcount growth by embedding automation across finance, payroll, governance, and compliance workflows.
• Ensure automation delivers measurable productivity, quality, and control improvements.

2. Increase Development Speed Without Increasing Risk

• Shorten delivery cycles while strengthening security, resilience, and regulatory compliance.
• Replace bespoke, fragile solutions with standardised, reusable components.

3. Enable Global Delivery Hubs to Scale

• Provide engineering platforms and automation capabilities that support India, ASEAN, and other hubs.
• Ensure development and automation work seamlessly across regions and time zones.

4. Improve Operational Control and Transparency

• Reduce manual interventions that create errors, rework, and audit risk.
• Embed observability, monitoring, and traceability into automated and engineered processes.

5. Turn Engineering into a Business Multiplier

• Ensure development and automation directly support margin improvement, client experience, and service stability.
• Shift engineering mindset from build to deliver business outcomes.

Experience & Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline (Master's preferred).
• 15+ years experience in software development and engineering leadership.
• 8+ years leading distributed, global development teams.
• Proven success delivering DevOps and automation strategies at scale.
• Strong background in:
• Cloud-native architectures
• Low-code / no-code platforms
• Automation platforms
• AI Development tools
• Strong understanding of AI-assisted development and secure code generation.
• Hands-on engineering credibility with strong design documentation capability.
• Excellent executive communication and presentation skills.

Preferred

• Experience leading large-scale digital transformation programs.
• Exposure to complex ERP / CRM ecosystems.
• Certifications in cloud, DevOps, agile, or automation disciplines.

Leadership Standards:

• Enterprise Orientation – Makes decisions based on what is best for the enterprise P&L.
• Judgment and Decision Authority – makes timely, high-quality decisions under ambiguity, owns consequences and does not escalate avoidable risk upwards.
• Change Leadership and Transformation Delivery – Personally leads and lands major change ensuring adoption, behavior change, and realized benefits.
• Influence without authority – creates alignment and movement across peers, regions and functions without relying on hierarchy or escalation.
• Future-relevant capability and mindset – Possesses the skill, adaptability and mindset required for Vistra's 2025 – 2028 operating model: platformitisation, digital enablement, global simplification, and commercial discipline.

What Vistra Offers

• Competitive executive compensation and performance incentives.
• Opportunity to shape Vistra's global development and automation engine.
• High visibility role at the centre of enterprise transformation.
• Direct impact on productivity, risk, scalability, and client outcomes.