Head of Finance – Technology & Digital at Absa South Africa

Job Summary

• To provide strategic financial leadership and commercial challenge to the Business Banking Technology & Digital function, ensuring technology expenditure, investments and architecture decisions deliver measurable business value.
• The role will provide end-to-end financial oversight across technology run costs, infrastructure, cloud, applications, software and licensing, technology vendors and strategic change.
• It will translate complex technology decisions into clear financial and commercial insights that enable informed investment, prioritisation and cost optimisation.

Job Description

Key accountabilities

Technology financial management

• Own financial planning, forecasting and performance management for the Technology portfolio.
• Develop transparency of technology costs across applications, platforms, infrastructure, vendors and business services.
• Establish clear views of Run vs Change expenditure and key cost drivers.
• Understand and challenge technology allocations and consumption-based charges.
• Develop Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and unit-cost perspectives for major technology services.
• Identify structural cost optimisation opportunities rather than relying only on tactical budget reductions.

Strategic technology investment and business cases

• Partner Technology executives on investment prioritisation and portfolio decisions.
• Build and challenge business cases across cloud migration, application modernisation, automation, digital platforms and technology transformation.
• Evaluate NPV, IRR, payback, P&L, cash-flow and balance-sheet implications of investments.
• Monitor benefits realisation against approved investment cases.
• Provide financial challenge on build vs buy, migrate vs retain and invest vs decommission decisions.

Cloud economics and FinOps

• Build sufficient understanding of Azure/AWS economics to challenge cloud consumption and optimisation opportunities.
• Understand consumption-based pricing, tagging and allocation methodologies.
• Partner Technology teams to improve transparency of cloud spend and accountability.
• Identify opportunities to optimise cloud utilisation and reduce inefficient consumption.
• Understand the financial implications of cloud migration and architecture decisions.

Application and technology portfolio economics

• Develop financial views at application/platform/service level, not only cost-centre level.
• Integrate application run costs, infrastructure, licences, vendor expenditure and change investment to determine full economic cost.
• Identify duplicate, underutilised or high-cost applications and platforms.
• Support application rationalisation and decommissioning decisions.
• Translate technology architecture choices into understandable financial consequences.

Technology commercial and vendor management

• Provide financial challenge on technology contracts, software licensing, SaaS, outsourcing and professional services.
• Analyse vendor cost trends and commercial commitments.
• Support contract renewal and commercial negotiation decisions.
• Challenge licence utilisation, demand and unit pricing.
• Assess the long-term TCO implications of major vendor and platform choices.

Technology performance and value management

• Establish a stronger connection between:
• Technology spend → technology performance → customer/business outcome → financial value

Data, analytics and management insight

• Develop decision-quality reporting through Power BI and advanced Excel.
• Analyse large datasets to identify technology cost drivers and optimisation opportunities.
• Create executive dashboards linking financial and technology KPIs.
• Perform scenario, sensitivity and driver-based modelling.
• Translate complex technology financial information into concise Exco-level insights.
• Use data to move Finance from retrospective reporting toward forward-looking commercial insight.

Strategic business partnering

• Act as a credible financial adviser to BB  CIO and Technology leadership.
• Constructively challenge technology investment, architecture and sourcing decisions.
• Translate technical discussions into financial and commercial implications.
• Influence decisions through fact-based analysis rather than financial control alone.
• Connect Technology priorities to BB strategy, customer outcomes, productivity and financial objectives.
• Critical skills and experience
• Finance and commercial

Essential

• Technology financial management
• FP&A, budgeting and forecasting
• Business-case development
• Investment appraisal
• TCO modelling
• Cost allocation and driver-based costing
• Benefits realisation
• Capex/Opex and capitalisation understanding
• Commercial/vendor analysis
• Advanced financial modelling

Technology

• Essential / strongly preferred
• Technology Business Management (TBM) concepts
• FinOps / cloud economics
• Application economics
• Technology cost-allocation methodologies
• Software and licensing economics
• Technology vendor management
• Understanding of infrastructure and cloud services
• Technology change/investment lifecycle
• Working knowledge
• APIs and integration
• SaaS
• Databases and compute
• Cloud vs on-premise architecture
• Cybersecurity and resilience
• Digital platforms
• AI and automation economics
• Application rationalisation and technical debt

Education

• Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Financial Sciences (Required)

End Date: November 6, 2026