Lead Campus and Branch Networks at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & People Management

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Campus and Branch Network Engineers
• Set performance objectives, conduct reviews, and support career development
• Provide strategic and technical direction, mentorship, and escalation support
• Foster a high-performance, collaborative, and customer-focused team culture
• Ensure adequate resourcing, skills coverage, and succession planning

Network Design & Architecture

• Accountable for the end-to-end design of campus and branch LAN, WAN and Wireless architecture and design
• Ensure network standards, patterns, and reference architectures are current and fit for purpose
• Lead network refresh, modernization, and rollout initiatives

Operations & Service Management

• Ensure high availability and performance of the campus and branch estate in line with enterprise SLAs
• Comply with incident, problem, and change management processes
• Proactively maintain the expected currency and hygiene of the estate
• Act as escalation point for complex or high-impact network issues
• Drive to conclusion the blameless postmortem process including root cause analysis and continuous service improvement
• Ensure SLAs, OLAs, and Key Risk Indicators are met or exceeded

Security & Compliance

• Ensure network environments comply with Absa’s security policies, regulatory, and audit requirements
• Partner with Cyber Security teams on addressing segmentation, access control, and threat mitigation
• Support patch management, vulnerability remediation and audit findings across the estate

Vendor & Stakeholder Management

• Manage relationships with suppliers and service providers
• Evaluate new technologies, tools, and solutions
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders (The Physical Channels Business, Security, Architecture, Cloud, End-User Computing, Facilities)
• Support projects requiring campus and branch networking

Financial & Asset Management

• Own the budget planning process and cost optimisation initiatives
• Manage network asset lifecycle, logistics and refresh planning
• Responsible for procurement and vendor contract negotiations

Key Technologies & Domains

• Campus LAN (switching and wireless)
• Branch LAN (switching and wireless)
• Enterprise Wireless (802.11 standards, controllers, NAC)
• WAN / SD-WAN (campus, branch and ATM)
• Security (segmentation, NAC)
• Routing & Switching (OSPF, BGP, VLANs, QoS)
• Network Monitoring & Automation tools

Minimum Requirements

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Minimum Experience Required

• 8–10+ years experience in enterprise network engineering
• 3–5 years experience leading or managing a technical network team
• Proven experience leading large-scale distributed network environment
• Experience working in financial services or highly regulated environments

Technical Skills

• Deep expertise in enterprise LAN, WAN, and wireless technologies
• Strong troubleshooting and root cause analysis skills
• Experience with network security and segmentation
• Exposure to SD-WAN and network automation is beneficial

Certifications (Preferred)

• CCNP / CCIE (Enterprise) or equivalent
• ITIL Foundation
• Relevant vendor wireless or security certifications

Competencies & Behaviours

• Strong leadership and people-management capability
• Strategic thinking with hands-on technical depth
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills with a strong focus on organisational collaboration
• High attention to detail and risk awareness
• Ability to perform under pressure in a 24/7 environment with strong problem solving skills
• Customer-centric and service-driven mindset
• Strong sense of ownership and accountability

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

End Date: February 11, 2026