Application Manager : Party Due Diligence at Sanlam Group

What will you do?

• An exciting opportunity exists within Sanlam Group Technology (SGT) for an experienced Application Manager with strong Technical Lead capability to join the Application Platforms team, reporting to the SGT Executive Head: Application Platforms.
• The Application Manager role is a role within the SGT Application Management structure and is specifically intended to bring technical oversight, operational stability and disciplined engineering practices to the applications being developed and supported.
• The role combines end-to-end application ownership for the Group Party Due Diligences solution and hands-on technical leadership across a variety of modern engineering environments over time. The successful candidate will be responsible for the stability, performance, and evolution of a defined application portfolio, while driving engineering excellence, cloud adoption, and scalable system design across teams.
• This individual will provide both tactical and operational leadership to ensure that applications are built and remain fit-for-purpose, cost-effective, compliant, and continuously improved within an Agile delivery environment.

What will make you successful in this role?

Application Portfolio Ownership

• Take ownership of a small portfolio of applications, including software development lifecycle management, FinOps, budgeting, cost recovery and performance monitoring.
• Ensure applications remain aligned with business needs, technology strategy, compliance and regulatory requirements.
• Develop and maintain application roadmaps (Functional & technical) in collaboration with business stakeholders and other technical role-players.
• Coordinate operations including upgrades, patches, and enhancements for both bespoke and vendor systems.

Technical Direction

• Align team deliverables with strategic technical decisions, ensuring scalable, high-quality solutions.
• Establish and maintain sound software engineering practices for bespoke applications (Including Coding standards, CI/CD, test automation, code reviews, documentation).
• Ensure the delivery of robust, maintainable code in a collaborative, cross-functional environment.
• Foster a DevSecOps culture within the team to ensure the delivery of robust, maintainable code in a collaborative, cross-functional environment.
• Introduce improvements in tooling, testing, deployment, and observability.
• Ensure all solutions adhere to Sanlam’s architectural and security standards.
• Drive system optimisation and performance improvements.

Leadership and Mentorship

• Lead and mentor a small multidisciplinary Agile delivery team.
• Foster team growth through coaching, cultivating top-tier engineering talent.
• Promote a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Ensure capacity planning, resourcing, and succession planning for key roles.

Agile Delivery & Stakeholder Management

• Operate within an Agile framework, while being empowered to adapt or enhance delivery processes as needed.
• Facilitate effective collaboration between product owners, business stakeholders, and technical teams.
• Drive delivery predictability, transparency, and quality.
• Ensure incidents, defects, and enhancements are managed effectively and business value is optimised.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

• Ensure compliance with IT policies, data protection standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Resolve critical compliance and audit gaps.
• Manage application risks, including technical debt, obsolescence, and security vulnerabilities.
• Prepare and present regular performance, risk, and roadmap reports to senior stakeholders.

Qualification

• Grade 12
• A relevant bachelor’s degree or diploma in Information Systems or Engineering.
• Leadership development interventions would be beneficial

Experience:

• 10+ Years of Software Development experience in general.
• 3+ Years proven experience in a technical leadership role would be recommended. (e.g., Tech Lead, Senior Engineer, or Architect)
• Proven track record of designing, building, and scaling distributed systems in cloud environments (AWS/Azure/GCP) would be beneficial
• Fintech/Insurtech experience would be beneficial

Knowledge:

• Significant understanding of Agile software development practices.
• Strong expertise in modern backend technologies (e.g., .NET, Java, Python, Node.js, Go) and frontend frameworks (React, Angular, or Vue)
• Experience with microservices, event-driven architectures, and API design (REST/gRPC/GraphQL)
• Hands-on with databases (SQL/NoSQL) and messaging systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
• Familiarity with DevOps practices (CI/CD, IaC, Kubernetes, Docker) and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Dynatrace)