Teodoro A. Rico III
Technology Executive — Banking · Aviation · Telco

Teodoro A. Rico III

"I run technology like a P&L and review architecture and code like an engineer."

Open to CTO & senior technology leadership roles
~$10M
USD annual cloud budget owned — business cases to CAPEX/OPEX
95 apps
migrated to cloud in 24 months — zero post-migration incidents
4d → 15min
build-and-release cycle across 25 critical applications
21 yrs
across banking, aviation, and telco — engineer to executive
About

I make expensive, irreversible technology decisions safe — including the risks that never show up in plain sight or in the numbers.

I work at the point where technology decisions become financial commitments, regulatory exposure, and long-term risk — for boards whose technology bill is a major line item and whose platform failures make the news.

I've done this work under real scrutiny: modernizing a major airline's platform under relentless uptime and passenger-experience demands, and a top Philippine bank's under regulatory and financial pressure. I read the financials, the contract, and the architecture — and what each implies for operations.

I don't gamble to find out what works
Plan Pilot Pivot Prove Production
What That Has Looked Like in Practice
Budget ownershipOwned cloud infrastructure budgets up to ~$10M USD annually — business cases, vendor commercial terms, CAPEX/OPEX planning.
Vendor leverageExited 25 mission-critical applications from a closed vendor architecture in 6 weeks — ahead of vendor disruption.
Capital efficiency~$1M annual cost avoidance in aviation, and infrastructure asset rationalization in banking that freed eight figures for new strategic focus while keeping the underlying technology operational.
Delivery velocityBuild-and-release cut from 4 days to 15 minutes; deployment downtime from 4 hours to zero.
Migration at scale95 applications and 200+ servers migrated in 24 months — zero post-migration incidents.
Intellectual propertyTechnical lead on 2 A-grade patents (US20170010806A1), delivered in 9 months.
Experience

First Vice President — Head of Cloud Engineering

Jan 2025 – Present
Security Bank Corporation
Head of cloud engineering for one of the Philippines' leading universal banks — accountable for the reliability, security posture, cost, and operating model of the bank's cloud estate under regulatory scrutiny. Principal author of the bank's cloud operating model and governance standards, covering decision rights, architecture review, change control, and compliance gates. I lead the modernization, capacity, and platform-security programs that keep business workloads uninterrupted while reducing run cost.

Director — Cloud Services (Head of Cloud)

Oct 2019 – Dec 2024
Cebu Pacific Air Inc
Built and led the airline's cloud function through its full transformation — from foundational infrastructure to a platform-engineering operating model — under continuous uptime and passenger-experience demands. Owned the platforms hosting mission-critical maintenance and flight-operations systems through peak seasonal load. Led large-scale cloud migration, containerization, DevSecOps re-engineering, cross-region disaster recovery, and the chargeback model that made platform spend accountable to the business.

Director — Cloud Planning Head

Mar 2018 – Sep 2019
Globe Telecom
Joined the Philippines' leading telco midway through its cloud journey to strengthen cloud planning and delivery. Built the playbooks that guided cloud migration, championed Ansible-based automation across the server estate — a Project of the Year finalist — and led the initial OpenShift proof of concept. Served on the steering committee for digital infrastructure.

Mobile Application Head

Mar 2014 – Jan 2016
Samsung PH R&D
Led the mobile application group at Samsung PH R&D, co-developing and commercializing software for the company's flagship products. Notable as the leader who delivered the R&D centre's first two A-grade patents (US20170010806A1). Authored the ideation selection framework behind them — designed to move concepts to production fast, and to make sure what shipped was actually useful.

Earlier Career

2005 – 2017
Engineering, Delivery & Commercial Roles
Exist Software Labs · Business Development Manager – Solution Architect · 2016–2017 — a deliberate career pivot: closed two international clients in six months on deals won through engineering acumen, with managed services positioned as "engineering pods" rather than tickets.
Misys Banking Systems · Project Lead · 2011–2013
SeaChange International · Lawson Software · engineering roles · 2008–2011
Digitel (Smart Communications) · Supervising Analyst / Risk Management Officer · 2005–2008 — authored the fraud-detection systems and algorithms that protected telco revenue.
Capabilities & Stack

Leadership

Technology StrategyOrganizational Design Business Case DevelopmentVendor Negotiation Risk & ComplianceIT Operating Model Design Talent Development & Retention

Technology

Legacy ModernizationCloud Economics (FinOps) Private Cloud & RepatriationReliability & Delivery Engineering Observability & Incident MgmtCloud Security

Stack

AWSGCPVMware Private CloudKubernetesDocker DevSecOpsSREGitOps CI/CDGitLabArgoCD TerraformSysdigPython JavaGo

Certifications

AWS Solutions Architect — Professional2023
AWS Certified Developer2019
Google Professional Cloud Architect2019
AWS Solutions Architect — Associate2018
Education & Recognition

Education

CTO Program — The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania2026 · in progress
MBA — Ateneo de Manila University2006–2009
BS Computer Engineering — Mapua Institute of Technology1999–2004

Patents & Awards

2 A-grade patents (US20170010806A1) — Samsung R&D
2nd Place, Project of the Year — JG Summit
Finalist, Project of the Year — Globe Telecom

People Leadership

98% leadership satisfaction · 0% attrition for 3 years
Staff grown into managers, engineers into architects
Writing & Speaking