Waqar Ali

EVP | Fintech Leader | 20+ Years in Core Banking & Digital Transformation

Based in: Lahore, PakistanCurrently: EVP-Senior Manager Retail Technology Support, Mashreq Bank Pakistan LtdExperience: 21 years

Hire me

Senior Fintech Executive with over 20 years of experience driving large-scale digital transformations, core banking upgrades, and high-volume retail technology operations. Proven track record in reducing COB times by 35%, maintaining 99.9% uptime for 100k+ daily transactions, and re-architecting legacy systems for cloud-native scalability. Expert in Temenos T24, enterprise architecture, and leading high-performing support organizations.

Experience

EVP-Senior Manager Retail Technology Support

Mashreq Bank Pakistan LtdPakistanworkMay 2026 – Present

Summary

To oversee , govern and provide support for Retail Technology applications portfolio in Pakistan.

What I did

  • Ensure the smooth operation and continuous improvement of multiple critical applications within Pakistan Digital Retail Banking.
  • Oversee the management of both Run and Change activities for these applications, ensuring maximum availability, stability, and performance.
  • Coordinate with business and technical teams to address issues, implement changes, and provide comprehensive support to the business.
  • Ensure compliance with organizational policies and procedures.
  • Prepare and present regular status reports to management and stakeholders on support and change management activities.
  • Provide training and knowledge transfer to team members and stakeholders

Results

  • Leading a team of 12 support managers overseeing 12 critical retail banking applications for Pakistan Digital Retail Banking.
  • Managing a high-volume environment processing over 100,000 transactions daily, with increasing scale as digital onboarding accelerates.
  • Consistently maintaining 99.9% system availability and uptime for all critical digital retail banking applications.

Application and Integration Architect

Habib Bank (Ltd) PakistanPakistanworkMar 2023 – May 2026

Summary

To collaborate with all relevant teams in HBL to enable transformation within bank’s digital ecosystem and engage in Core Banking transformation project ENZO based on Temenos TRANSACT and TDH.

What I did

  • Establish the application architecture layouts including application communication diagrams, matrices, etc.
  • Collaborate with the Dev/Ops teams and develop and manage changes in application architecture across the enterprise.
  • Define information elements, composite structure, logical relationships and constraints, taxonomy, and derivation rules for all applications
  • Design and implement integration strategies across enterprise applications and platforms.
  • To oversee system interoperability, scalability, and performance optimization
  • Define IT application landscape with a focus on application rationalization and modernisation including cloud migration and API-led integration
  • Liaise with the SOA/Microservice Dev Teams to manage reusability of applications, service across the board.
  • Reviewing technology solutions being implemented for the bank while keeping intact the enterprise-wide business needs within the prevailing enterprise technical standards.
  • Integrating trends in application architecture in application development projects.
  • Design, implement, and manage continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines
  • Work closely with development, operations, and security teams to ensure smooth and efficient delivery processes.

Results

  • Re-architected legacy applications with modern integration patterns, replacing outdated mechanisms to enable faster time-to-market for new features.
  • Refactored and eliminated redundant APIs and services, streamlining the enterprise application landscape and reducing technical debt.
  • Consolidated cross-domain business requirements into a centralized, scalable solution, improving system reliability and decomposition.
  • Improved system stability, allowing the engineering team to shift focus from maintenance to delivering new functional features.
Temenos TRANSACTTDHSOAMicroservicesCI/CDCloud MigrationAPI-led integration

Unit Head Application Administration (CBS & AUX)

Allied Bank (Ltd) PakistanPakistanworkApr 2018 – Mar 2023

Summary

To overall administer, manage and monitor the bank’s Core Banking & other auxiliary systems.

What I did

  • Responsible for project planning and keeping it aligned with ITG’s Strategic and Operation plans.
  • Foresee activities related to upgrade, deployment, automation, monitoring & maintenance of Core banking and Auxiliary systems including but not limited to Temenos T24,SWIFT,Big Data ,OBI, INCHEQS, EFS, CLINK, RAAST,AUTOMIC.
  • Capacity planning, optimization of Core banking and Auxiliary systems keeping in view the industry best practices.
  • Ensure applications/systems availability as per their service level objectives.
  • Perform a continuous cycle of service improvement to the production services through service continuity, availability, capacity planning and performance management.
  • Co-ordinate with vendors, technical and business teams for smooth banking operations and ensure timely resolution of reported issues through relevant stakeholders along with its RCA.
  • To report IT Incidents at relevant forum and continuously monitor incident response execution activities with concerned functions till rectification.
  • To automate daily operational critical tasks in order to mitigate any human error and less dependency on humans.
  • Validate project status and Oversees project status, authorize vendor payments and manages conflicts within the teams.
  • To address application level information security related vulnerabilities by taking corrective and preventive measures.
  • To address audit observations both internal and external against various applications by having interviews, walkthroughs and providing relevant data. In case of gap take measures to rectify the observations for its compliance.
  • Continuously monitors progress of reporting functions to ensure meeting of project deadlines.
  • Take part in planning and implementation of DR activity of various applications.
  • Plan, organize, lead resources to meet the application administration’s department targets.
  • Coach, mentor, motivate and supervise team members and influence them to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work
  • Any other assignment assigned by higher management as and when desired.

Results

  • Led the upgrade and automation of Temenos T24 core banking and auxiliary systems, ensuring stability and performance through continuous process optimization.
  • Reduced Close of Business (COB) processing time by 35% through rigorous system optimization and process refinement.
  • Achieved sub-second transaction processing times and maintained a peak throughput of 350 TPS during peak hours without performance deterioration.
Temenos T24SWIFTOracle Big DataOBIINCHEQSEFSCLINKRAASTAUTOMIC

Skills

Technical

Java/J2EE
PL/SQLPL/SQL
Oracle
Java Scripting
jBASE
MS SQL ServerMS SQL Server
Tomcat
IBM WebSphere Application Server
JenkinsJenkins
GitHubGitHub
JIRAJIRA
AJAX
HTML/CSSHTML/CSS
IBM MQ
KubernetesKubernetes
OpenShift
VB
Shell Scripting
MySQLMySQL
ASP
DockerDocker
C++C++
OpenLaszlo

Areas of expertise

ITIL Foundation
Problem Solving
Project Management
Vendor Management

Projects

Research Proposal and Management System

Developeracademic
A web based application developed in JSP using layered architecture. This application enables the students and faculty members to manage their research proposals as well as allow the Accounts Department to manage budget allocations to these proposals.
JSPLayered Architecture

Competency Management System

Developeracademic
A web based application developed in Open Laszlo with Java and Hibernate using layered J2EE architecture. This application provides any Organization to automate their employee’s evaluation mechanism.
Open LaszloJavaHibernateJ2EE

Online Shopping Mall

Developeracademic
A full-fledged dynamic website implemented using JSP and MS-Access
JSPMS-Access

CMMI Appraisal of a Software Company

Appraiseracademic
A CMMI based appraisal of a software house conducted in order to see their processes maturity.
CMMI

Credit Card System

Analyst/Designeracademic
It is used to handle large-scale information efficiently e.g. simultaneous transactions at different places. Different Analysis, Design and Testing models of the system were developed using UML
UML

Education

MS (CS)

LUMSComputer ScienceGPA 2.932005 – 2007

Societies & activities

Active member of IEEE-LUMS web team

BCS (Hons)

GCU, LahoreComputer ScienceGPA 3.62000 – 2004

Societies & activities

Active member of Government College University Computer Science SocietyActive member of Government College University Political Science Society/Athletic Society

FSc (Pre Engineering)

GCU, LahorePre Engineering1998 – 2000

Matric (Science)

St Anthony’s High School, LahoreScience1996 – 1998

Societies & activities

Captain of the winning cricket team in School

Recognition

Awards

Gold Medal

St Anthony’s High School

For being the top student in school for three consecutive years

Scholarship

Higher Secondary School Board Lahore

For getting A+ grade in matriculation

Certifications

ITIL Foundation

Moving Minds

Agile with Atlassian Jira

Coursera

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

Microsoft

RedHat- Container Adoption Boot Camp (DO700)

RedHat

Social impact & activities

Digital Transformation Session

Digital Transformationother

Attended session on Digital Transformation

SAS BI and ETL/DI training

SAS Trainingworkshop

Attended SAS BI and ETL/DI training

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