Job Description

Role purpose:

• M-Pesa, is a pioneering Fintech business and global market leader in mobile money. From starting in 2007 as a convenient means by which the unbanked and underbanked could make digital payments, M-Pesa has now grown to offer over 50 million active customers financial services, enterprise, merchant and retail solutions. We are proud of our work in enabling the digital economy in our markets, and in driving financial inclusion. M-Pesa Africa is now making strides to deepen and strengthen its offering to consumers and businesses in our operating countries, making it easier for them to manage their money and get more from their limited resources.

• We are seeking a highly experienced and dynamic Head of Platform Engineering to lead our platform engineering team. The Head of Platform Engineering will play a crucial role in overseeing the planning, development, deployment, and maintenance of our technical infrastructure, ensuring it aligns with our business objectives. The successful candidate will be a visionary leader with a deep understanding of platform engineering, cloud technologies, and software development. They will also possess exceptional communication and leadership skills to guide a high-performing team.

• The Head of Platform Engineering will help to drive operations and automation to accelerate product delivery and ensure consistent and stable services. Will ensure that the technologies employed across environments including Security and DevOps are correctly operated through a mixture of in-house and third-party teams and services, to provide a resilient, secure, and highly available platform for our products and services to run on,
• and that the overall strategy for platform delivery is defined, approved, and implemented.

• This role will be responsible to implement and maintain shared platform services in a fast, secure, and efficient way to build NextGEN Technology platforms. It will also be responsible to drive the roadmap of the Platform Engineering and supports the delivery of key futures by other business ARTs.

• Implementing cloud-native infrastructure, enabling microservices and extensive use of Open APIs, as well as achieving zero service outage, which requires enabling CI/CD tools and DevSecOps, as part of our Tech 2025-2030 mission, will be a key objective in this role.

Your responsibilities will include:

Exhibits Servant leadership:

• Listen and support teams in problem identification and decision-making
• Create an environment of mutual influence
• Understand and empathize with others
• Encourage and support the personal development of each individual and the development of teams
• Coach people with powerful questions rather than use authority
• Think beyond day-to-day activities; apply systems thinking
• Support the teams' commitments
• Be open and appreciate openness in others
• Encourage collaboration between teams, Product Management and System Architects
• Be obsessively customer focussed

Help align Strategy with execution:

• Delivery of the Strategic Product RoadMap
• Collaborate with Lean Portfolio Management, Product Management and System Architects to help ensure we are working towards the right outcomes
• Understand and operate within Lean Budgets and ensure adherence to Guardrails
• Help drive & prioritize the platform roadmap incorporating industry and research and feedback from launch to evolve product offerings
• Build business cases for different Infrastructure propositions
• Manage and optimize the flow of value through the ART through ongoing evaluation of practices associated with DevSecOps and Release on Demand in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline

Key Responsibility Area

• Drive relentless improvement via Inspect and Adapt workshops; assess the agility level of the ART and help them improve
• Foster Communities of Practice and the use of engineering and Built-In Quality practices
• Work with the Value Management Office on program execution and operational excellence

• Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of platform engineers, providing guidance and support to achieve technical excellence.
• Platform Strategy: Develop and execute a robust platform strategy that aligns with the company's business goals, emphasizing scalability, reliability, and security.
• Cloud Management: Oversee cloud architecture, ensuring efficient resource utilization and cost optimization while maintaining high availability.
• Infrastructure Management: Manage the entire infrastructure lifecycle, including provisioning, configuration, maintenance, and performance optimization.
• Technology Evaluation: Stay updated on emerging technologies, tools, and trends in platform engineering to drive innovation and improve system performance.
• Collaboration: Collaborate with other teams, such as development, operations, and security, to ensure seamless integration and alignment of efforts.
• Security and Compliance: Implement and enforce security best practices and compliance standards across the platform.
• Budget Management: Develop and manage the department's budget, ensuring cost-effectiveness and resource allocation.
• Monitoring and Performance Analysis: Implement robust monitoring systems and performance analysis tools to maintain system health and optimize performance.
• Vendor Management: Manage relationships with third-party vendors and service providers, ensuring efficient service delivery and cost management.

• Deep knowledge of cloud technologies (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong understanding of software development and DevOps practices.
• Strong commitment to security, compliance, and best practices.
• Relevant certifications (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect) a plus.

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

• Educated to degree level in STEM or equivalent working experience.
• Agile Experience including international suppliers or markets - minimum 5 years.
• Excellent problem analysis and resolution skills to support work in reactive and proactive environments.
• Management Experience in a FinTech environment, or at least infrastructure in a financial service environment - minimum 5 years
• Technical experience working with infrastructure technologies - Min 10 years.
• 8+ years of platform engineering management experience at an IaaS company, including demonstrated experience working on enterprise solutions.

Skills

• Design and execute short plus long-term strategic plans to assure infrastructure capacity attains current and future needs.
• Strategic thinker that can relate technology solutions to customer use cases.
• Experience with comprehensive disaster recovery architecture and operations, including storage area network and redundant, highly available server and network architectures.
• Hands-on technical depth enables direct oversight, and participation for complex infrastructure implementation, system upgrades and operational troubleshooting.
• Participate in the formulation of the company's enterprise architecture and business system plans; assessing cost and feasibility, and ensuring the plan is aligned with and supports the strategic goals of the business
• Works closely with and manage strategic vendor partner relationships. Setup and run the Governance with the partners. Build strategic relationships for creating value for the organization.
• Provides platform engineering vision, enables innovation and seeks to leverage IT trends that can create business value consistent with the company's requirements and expectations.
• Planning, project management and implementation leadership, identifying opportunities for automation, cost savings, and service quality improvement.
• Good understanding of DevOps or DevSecOps.
• Proven experience in the following technologies: server, network and firewall Hardware; Infrastructure Virtualization; Data Centers; VMware; Cloud infrastructure
• Strong data analytical skills, able to identify solutions to complex problems.

Personal Attributes

• Self-starter
• Ability to work under pressure and without supervision.
• Excel at analytical thinking
• An adaptive, empathetic, collaborative, and positive mindset

Closing date for Applications: 24 November 2023.

The base location for this role is Midrand Vodacom Campus.

The company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.
Vodacom is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates and values diversity & inclusion.

Commitment from Vodacom

Vodacom is committed to attracting, developing and retaining the very best people by offering a flexible, motivating and inclusive workplace in which talent is truly recognized, developed and rewarded. We believe that diversity plays an important role in the success of our business and we are committed to creating an inclusive work environment which respects, values, celebrates and makes the most of peoplexe2x80x99s individual differences - we are not only multinational but multicultural too. At Vodacom you will have access to our excellent flexible benefits programme that you would expect from any global company.

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