Lead Platforms - Load Balancing & DDI at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Description

Platform Direction Setting, Solution Design & Performance Management

• Work with the Cross Functional Technology Leaders and CIO’s to understand & assess business and customer requirements (short, medium, long term)
• Leverage business (e.g. strategy, customer insights & CVP, competitor insights) and cross-technology (tech products & services, architecture, tech roadmap) performance data to identify strategic and operational platform opportunities  
• Positively contribute to the organisation wide platform & engineering strategy & the achievement of end-end ‘Platforms as a Service’
• Set the supported platform vision and direction for the organisation
• Clearly articulate the supported platform strategy & roadmap
• Cascade the platform vision, direction & strategy across the business & facilitate stakeholder alignment
• Build a leading practice  ‘centre of enablement’ partnership with business - trusted to influence the broader technology & product & services strategies - & achieve an integrated set of technology, business & customer objectives
• Collaborate across the tech value chain (CSO, CTO, etc.) to guide the business on the appropriate technical solution (cost to value) & the range of strategic technical choices to be made
• Take full accountability for leading the design, delivery & management of advanced (i.e. simple, innovative, optimised, modernised) platforms and associated infrastructure & architecture (end to end) & their validation
• Lead the identification and selection of fit for purpose internal & external technologies
• Design, implement & manage design thinking practices across platform feature teams to deliver architecturally sound platform technology solutions
• Lead & facilitate the design of the integrated set of platform solution blueprints & coach teams on the strategic direction, vision, platform development, architecture & infrastructure holistically
• Lead the detailed scoping, prioritisation & integration planning for the integrated set of platform solution designs & deployment across multiple stakeholder groups
• Act as the point of escalation for all major issues and events and apply deep subject matter expertise to facilitate their resolution with minimal business & customer impact.
• Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of platforms (all applications) – ensuring ongoing optimization & cost to value for our businesses (think bank wide)
• Be accountable for leading & developing innovative methods for measuring the customer experience, and translate the data to drive platform improvements
• Define & lead the implementation of quality performance measures & metrics & related data analytics tools and processes to enable business decision making
• Leverage data and insights from business, customer and platform itself to make technical design and implementation decisions
• Lead the resolution of service issues by analyzing and prioritizing data from stakeholders and directing service improvement efforts.  
• Take full accountability for the end-to-end platform quality, completeness and resulting user experience for the life of the product or service.
• Design & deliver an optimal platform delivery capability that aligns the necessary people, process, & systems for optimal efficiency & effectiveness
• Assess Platform Capabilities and drive capability development plans for exceptional delivery & evolution of the platform
• Lead the design, implementation & adoption of enhanced process or technology solutions that identify and resolve platform, system, deployment, and environmental issues.
• Identify new and emerging practices for managing platforms and lead the adoption of new practices, across groups or disciplines to improve platform & associated platform analysis capabilities.
• Meaningfully contribute to & ensure solutions align to the design & direction of the Group Technology (e.g. architecture, DevOps) standards, principles, preferences & practices. Short term deployment must align to strategic long term delivery.
• Meaningfully contribute to & ensure solutions align to the design and direction of the Group Infrastructure standards and practices e.g. SLA’s, OLA’s, IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, Containerisation etc.
• Identify, development and lead the implementation of platform standards and best practices, and drive adoption across multiple value-chain wide product & service teams

Accountability: Platform Development & Delivery Management

• Leverage the required expert level (own) skill & knowledge in platform engineering. architecture & Infrastructure, design and manage all development & development practices & outputs across feature teams
• Ensure the most optimal design & deployment of technical solutions in the organization (via pipeline – not manually)
• Lead the quality assurance & test automation agenda & continuous integration / delivery strategies & frameworks for the platform and take accountability for the platforms delivery of the broader technology principles of: self-service, resilience, repeatability, testability, scalability & resilience
• Guide code development practices (across platform & product engineering teams) and processes through an understanding of complex concepts and developmental practices
• Guide & ensure the delivery of quality development (code) based on own experience platform engineering
• Effectively manage the platform delivery pipeline & associated releases for maximum customer impact & minimum business risk
• Lead the maintenance & optimization of the platform as a ‘way of doing things / culture’ across the team. You are fully accountable for the longevity of solutions.
• Coach & Mentor senior engineers on technical competencies to effectively deliver on platform strategy.
• Resource & manage the appropriate number and nature (skill & capability) of squad based teams to execute on both Run & Change elements of delivery.
• Ensure agile practices are implemented and sustained for effective delivery to business e.g. RETRO’s etc.

Accountability: Financial & Vendor Management, Risk & Governance

• Positively contribute to the development & management of the integrated platform cost model & framework
• Take full accountability for and lead the design & continuous improvement of an integrated platform specific cost model & the ongoing optimisation of platform efficiencies and effectiveness
• Analyse operational cost data, identify cost-saving efficiencies and influence the business to adopt these efficiencies across multiple service teams – taking care to balance decision making for optimal efficiency & effectiveness
• Carry the ‘one stop shop’ accountability for all risk associated with technical decision making (from ideation to deployment)
• Manage & Apply the organization risk & governance frameworks - & represent the platform in all risk, governance & compliance processes (e.g. CTO approvals etc)
• Manage all vendor selection processes & take full accountability for all related commercial impact
• Negotiate best fit contracts for the organization at an enterprise level and align decision making to our key business principles of scalability, resilience, captivity etc.
• Deliver on time & on budget (always)

Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems or related field is required
• 8 – 10 IT Experience, with 5 in a leadership role, 
• Networking architect/solutions design/engineering background is preferred with understanding of load balancers, DNS, DDI and DHCP
• Demonstrable experience in managing infrastructure hardware and software lifecycle is advantageous. 
• Demonstrable experience in the use of incident and problem management ticketing systems (e.g. ServiceNow).
• Managing vendor SLA’s and business unit OLA’s.
• Managing service improvement programmes.  
• Participation in root cause analysis and reporting.

People

• Set & Cascade platform vision, direction & strategy across squads (feature teams)
• Design, implement and lead cross functional collaboration processes across technology teams and set cross-team commitments and achieve scale by enabling the work of others
• Proactively attract, recruit, develop, retain, reward & deploy a diverse resource base aligned to an ever evolving tech environment (ahead of demand)
• Build a high performance team environment through self-directed teams by driving performance management & measurement that is aligned with agile working practices (including daily, weekly, etc. sprint routines, regular & honest feedback etc.)
• Accountable for the right people in the right teams to deliver on our tech strategy (always!)
• Leverage coaching techniques to drive a higher quality design and deployment of technical products and services across technology teams

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology