Lead Digital Applications at South African Airways (SAA)

Job Purpose

The primary purpose of the position is to manage and drive innovation through technology and ensure that all e-Commerce, mobile applications, web channels, integration and data collection and insights support the key digital transformation vision to be a leading digital experience airline.  Provide lead support to key strategic initiatives by leading the innovation process on existing systems and applications.  Interpret business strategy and determine innovative solutions supporting strategy implementation.  Manage a highly skilled team of technology drivers including service providers and suppliers.  Interact with key business users to identify innovative opportunities for improving technology platforms that provide the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness.

Principal Accountabilities

• Provide input to the design of the Department Strategy and implement strategy within area/s of responsibility
• Recommends and standardises policies, processes and systems to support implementation of the strategy
• Drive profitability in area of responsibility and overall department
• Manage and control budget in area of responsibility and support cost and headcount containment
• Ensure vendor and value optimisation
• Enhance and further develop the corporate intranet solution into a more sociable and collaborative environment driven by clear user needs and adheres to the digital by default service standards
• Develop and customise intranet-based solutions with social tools that will help to organise, structure, find and re-use content with an easy to use web interface across web and mobile devices
• Develop custom features leveraging on available open source modules for social networking, feeds and aggregation and enterprise grade search engine
• Develop front end features that are responsive, accessible, highly usable and with interactive features that engage users and help staff to find reasons to use the intranet
• Develop functional and technical specification documentation
• Advise on best practice in web development, integrations and content management frameworks especially geared towards a corporate intranet
• Provide guidance and on the job technical handover to technical users and developers
• Work to tight deadlines managing time efficiently
• Record and report progress accurately during the update project, escalating any issues as appropriate
• Conduct testing of changes, this may include technical, accessibility, usability and user acceptance testing
• Ensure that all online applications meet required usability and accessibility guidelines
• Assist in the evaluation of solutions and implement chosen products/systems
• Research, identify good practice and share knowledge of tools and techniques with the wider Digital team both developers and non-developers
• Work with business partners to implement new enhancements from the analysis to implementation phases, while ensuring that thorough testing occurs
• Support business objectives and ensure alignment with existing and new solutions
• Partner with Business stakeholders to define business and systems requirements for new technology deployments
• Create test plans / cases for enhancements, and coordinate and conduct user acceptance testing
• Perform direct research on potential technology solutions in support of software procurement efforts
• Respond to Customer Service Requests/Minor Enhancements as required
• Partner with Project Management Office (PMO) Team and Business Relationship Manager (BRM) to serve as technical lead over business-critical projects
• Act as liaison between the Customer and Third-Party Vendors to support and enhance systems
• Provide Operational support for existing solutions
• Receive Incidents relating to system issues and outages
• Troubleshoot, interpret logs, document steps to reproduce software bugs, process problems or other issues which create application errors
• Produce timely incident reports documenting system downtime
• Support identification of Root Cause Analysis
• Monitor systems for issues such as quality, accessibility and work with departments to resolve
• Develop and maintain technical and operational procedure and work instruction documentation
• Provide on-call support as needed
• Benchmarking, analysing, and making recommendations with supporting data for the improvement and growth of the environment
• Ensuring application documentation and portfolio are comprehensive and kept up to date
• Negotiate service level agreements with IT service suppliers
• Monitor and mitigate all business risk activities (including business continuity and operational risk management) taking place in the operational environment (both within the technological environment and other operational divisions) in line with industry regulations and legislation
• Ensure that required systems for support of organisational activities are implemented and aligned

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Information Systems or related field at NQF 7 and/or 7 – 10 years’ experience in systems development, maintenance and web content management experience of which 5 years’ is at management level
• Advanced certifications or relevant training and ITIL certification would be an advantage
• 3 years’ experience in digital on platforms such as e-commerce, online channels and application integration
• Proven track record of the ability to initiate, plan and execute technical projects
• Knowledge of latest global technology capabilities and trends across applications and platforms
• Knowledge and Skills
• Knowledge of responsive web design
• Knowledge of DevOps practices
• Agile development
• Knowledge of api’s and micros service integration
• Solid understanding of web metrics, digital analytics, with the ability to generate, analyse and interpret data
• MS Visual Studio or any web development IDE/Editor
• Content management systems
• Knowledge of digitally connected services along the entire customer journey
• Knowledge of service oriented and Microservices architectures
• Knowledge of data analytics and insights
• Knowledge of Devops as an enabler for agile development and deployment for dgital systems
• An understanding and appreciation of the development cycle specific to Data Warehousing and BI technologies
• Knowledge and proven experience with the deployment and operational management of MIS and BI applications
• Exceptional communication skills, with ability to influence and negotiate both internally and externally
• Strong project management capability
• System administration
• Problem solving skills
• Information security policies
• On-call network troubleshooting
• Network protocols
• Process improvement
• Resource utilisation
• Must be able to work under constant deadline pressure and manage multiple projects across multiple lines of business
• Contract negotiations and management
• Service delivery
• IT System Development
• IT System Health Management
• IT Application Support
• IT Data Centre Infrastructure 
• IT Security
• ITIL Service, problem, incident, configuration management
• SLA and contract conformance and governance
• Cloud Practices
• DevOPS
• Attributes
• Leads with purpose
• Manages team performance
• Manages transformation and change initiatives
• Drives innovation
• Sells/ translates the vision
• Leverages team diversity
• Role models behaviours and values

Additional Information

SAA is using an online recruitment tool.  Applicants are required to complete an individual registration profile capturing essential personal and career selection criteria.  Applicants must please note that they only need to complete the online registration once and thereafter they can update their online profiles as and when necessary. 

PLEASE NOTE: The onus are on applicants to ensure all mandatory fields are completed.  Incomplete online profiles will be disqualified from the application process.  Online profiles are used for screening and shortlisting purposes.   A CV is only for verification and record keeping purposes.  Applicants need to ensure that their online profiles are completed with correct and current information.  Incomplete sections can disqualify applicants from the screening and selection process. 

This applies to all internal and external applicants.

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