Work
Thirty-plus years in banking technology. Eight of them buying it.
I joined JP Morgan in London in 1993. Eighteen years running IT infrastructure at Bank of Cyprus. Since 2013 I’ve been at Piraeus Bank — first running automated payment systems operations, and since 2018 leading Strategic Sourcing of Technology for the Group.
That’s the short version. The longer one is that I’ve spent a career on both sides of the same relationship: running the technology, and then buying it.
What I do now
My title is Director, Category Manager, Strategic Sourcing of Technology, Group Procurement at Piraeus Bank. I lead a team of three buyers.
I am not going to put a figure on the portfolio I’m responsible for. What I will say is what it covers — which is everything the bank runs on:
- Enterprise software licensing, cloud and SaaS agreements
- Core banking, treasury and market-data systems
- Datacentre, server and storage hardware; desktop and end-user computing
- Telecoms, mobile telephony and connectivity services
- Cyber security and technical support services
- Branch, ATM and self-service equipment frame agreements
What the job actually is
Sourcing technology in a bank is not procurement. Anyone can run a tender. The part that matters is the part that isn’t commercial:
- Setting the strategy, not just running the process. Which suppliers the bank depends on, for how long, and on what terms — decided years before the invoice arrives.
- Running the negotiations. Enterprise licensing, cloud and consumption-based agreements, core systems. The deals where the wrong clause costs more than the wrong price.
- Designing the machinery underneath. Procurement policies, procedures, methodologies and tools — the part that outlives any single deal, and the part that makes the tenth negotiation cheaper than the first.
- Sitting between the bank and its suppliers. I’m the primary contact for the major technology providers, which means as much time on governance, risk and dependency as on price.
- Working the seams. Legal, Compliance, Risk and the IT organisation — a sourcing decision that only Procurement understands is a sourcing decision that fails.
What I’m working on now: AI
Since 2023 a growing share of my time goes to AI, and it splits into two jobs that are routinely confused with each other.
Buying it. Sourcing and contracting AI solutions — requirements, vendor evaluation, commercial negotiation, and the awkward shift from per-seat licensing to consumption pricing, where the invoice depends on how much the business actually uses the thing. Assessing suppliers on data handling, compliance, lock-in and vendor dependency, and writing those assessments into contract terms rather than into a slide.
Building with it. I run a self-hosted AI platform of my own — multi-agent orchestration, self-hosted model APIs, workflow automation, and applications I’ve built and operate. That’s the difference between having read about the technology and having had to keep it running.
You cannot sit across a table and assess a cloud agreement or a vendor’s lock-in claims if you have never run the thing yourself. Buying better is the whole reason I build.
Where I’ve been
| Years | Where | What |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 – now | Piraeus Bank | Director, Category Manager, Strategic Sourcing of Technology — Group Procurement. Team of 3 buyers. |
| 2013 – 2018 | Piraeus Bank | Manager, Automated Payment Systems Operations — led 12 engineers. |
| 1995 – 2013 | Bank of Cyprus | Assistant Manager, IT Infrastructure Operations — led 15 engineers; servers, storage, desktop technology and applications. |
| 1993 – 1995 | JP Morgan, London | Candidate Associate, Technology Support Services, Corporate Technology — Treasury, Legal & Compliance. |
Before that: national service in the Cyprus Raiding Forces, Sergeant, 1987–1989.
Education
- University of Manchester — BSc (Hons) Computer Engineering
- University College London — MSc Data Communication Networks and Distributed Systems
- JP Morgan New York — Financial Instruments training
- A’ Kykkos Lyceum, Nicosia, Cyprus
Outside the day job
I run a homelab that has outgrown every plan I made for it, and I build software — about thirty projects, three of which are live and publicly usable.
What the lab is and how it got that way →
Where to find me
LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/savvaskonstantinidis
A full CV is available on request.