The architecture of autonomy: How ING built a future-proof tech strategy

I recently sat down with Marco Eijsackers, ING’s Global Head of Tech Strategy, at their headquarters in Amsterdam. Serving over 40 million customers worldwide with an enterprise tech team of thousands of engineers, ING faces a core question shared by many enterprise IT leaders: How do you build a flexible tech strategy that embraces AI without locking yourself into a single vendor’s roadmap?

Our conversation focuses on the architecture of autonomy, exploring how ING balances scale, strict financial regulations, and rapid technology cycles, inviting fellow leaders to reflect on these themes.

• Tackling complexity with open standards: ING is streamlining legacy systems onto global, reusable platform capabilities. By relying on open source, Kubernetes, and standard APIs, they maintain fluidity across environments while eliminating vendor lock-in.
• Digital sovereignty by design: Navigating regulations like DORA requires a "cloud smart" approach. ING protects sensitive workloads on a private cloud while selectively leveraging public cloud providers for non-critical systems.
• Empowering engineers: Through their One Engineering System, ING provides developers with automated guardrails and "golden paths." Embedding compliance directly into workflows reduces provisioning times from hours to minutes.
• Preparing for an agent-first future: Beyond its current AI applications, such as its Vista platform, ING is establishing sandbox environments to safely experiment with agentic runtimes and new operating models.

When asked what advice he would give fellow technology executives, Marco offered a principle that resonated deeply with me:

I’ve always shared a similar philosophy: strong opinions, weakly held. Have a firm conviction, but be open to changing your mind when presented with contrasting data. Whether you are navigating cloud migrations, boosting developer velocity, or preparing for enterprise AI, ING’s journey offers a valuable blueprint for modern IT strategy.

Watch our full conversation below.