By Nupur Anand
NEW YORK (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase hired former PayPal executive Sri Shivananda as its new chief technology officer (CTO), the bank said in a memo on Monday, the latest senior hire tasked with deploying some of its $17 billion tech budget.
Shivananda will start later this month and succeed A.J. Lang, who announced his plans to retire earlier this year, according to the memo seen by Reuters. He will report to Lori Beer, the bank’s global chief information officer (CIO), who also sits on the operating committee.
The new executive has a track record of business growth and innovation that will help JPMorgan to “tackle complex technological challenges,” Beer wrote.
She also recruited two senior leaders from Amazon recently. Manoj Sindhwani was brought in as CIO for its chief data and analytics office in April to design and create data and AI platforms, while Darrin Alves was hired as CIO for infrastructure platforms, including its public cloud, last year.
Tech workers comprise 20% of the bank’s global workforce of almost 312,000 employees.
Implementing AI could add about $1 billion to $1.5 billion in value for the bank, executives told investors at a company presentation in May.
“Improving the efficiency of both our software engineering and our physical infrastructure is a top priority with the end goal being to get maximum productivity out of tech dollars,” while also attracting talent, Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said in May.
Banks have faced fierce competition to recruit tech workers in recent years.
“We have to compete with the best in AI and technology,” CEO Jamie Dimon said at the May event.
(Reporting by Nupur Anand in New York, Editing by Lananh Nguyen and David Evans)
