Manager IT Software Development & Delivery at Toyota

 KEY JOB FUNCTIONS:

• Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, a vacancy exists at Toyota Connected Africa (TCA) in Sandton. The successful candidate will establish and lead TCA's in-house mobile application development team, take ownership of the customer-facing mobile application from the current external development partner, and deliver secure, high-quality digital solutions that shorten time-to-market for customers in South Africa and other African markets.

KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS:

• Establish and lead the in-house mobile development team.
• Drive Agile delivery practices, including sprint planning, backlog management, estimation, code reviews, and release activities.
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines to support efficient, reliable, and scalable application delivery.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools and practices to improve productivity, quality, and delivery outcomes.
• Own the handover of the mobile application from the current external development partner.
• Manage the API and release boundary with the partner that continues to develop the platform and web applications.
• Manage engineering-capacity vendors: statements of work, performance and escalations.
• Uphold architecture, code-quality, security and data-privacy standards within the team.
• Manage App Store and Google Play submission, release and monitoring processes.
• Turn business demand into a deliverable roadmap with the Business Analyst, QA Engineer, UI/UX Designer and business teams.
• Monitor and report on project delivery, key milestones, risks, issues, and resource requirements to the CTO and executive leadership.
• Mentor, coach, and develop team members through ongoing support, performance management, and skills development initiatives.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:

• NQF Level 6 (minimum 360 credits on level 8 framework) qualification in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline.
• Project management certification (PMP, PRINCE2 or equivalent) and Agile / Scrum certification (PSM, CSM, SAFe or equivalent).
• Minimum 7 years' experience in software / IT, of which 5 years managing development projects or teams through the full lifecycle.
• Minimum 3 years' experience managing outsourced development partners or vendors, including statements of work and performance.
• Working knowledge of the iOS and Android platforms and of App Store and Google Play release processes.
• Sound understanding of the software development lifecycle, CI/CD and quality assurance.
• Experience of delivering consumer-facing applications and of reporting at executive level.
• Hands-on software development experience, and practical use of AI-assisted development tooling, will be an advantage.
• Mobile application delivery experience (iOS / Android, Flutter) or server-side development experience will be an advantage.
• Experience of establishing a new team or engineering process from scratch will be an advantage.

COMPETENCIES:

• Accurate information gathering and analysis.
• Awareness and commitment to our mission.
• Awareness of situations and decisiveness.
• Communication and sharing of mid to long term plans.
• Creation of innovative vision.
• Establishing framework and systems for organisational learning.
• Feedback of evaluation results and long-term development of others.
• Perseverance.
• Strategic reallocation of resources and review of work methods.
• Suitable assignment and objective performance review.

IMPORTANT DIMENSIONS:

• Self-starter, able to build process where none exists.
• Planning and organising.
• Data gathering, analysis and interpretation.
• Stakeholder management and negotiation.
• Occasional international travel is required.
• May be required to work outside normal hours for releases and critical production incidents, and to co-ordinate across Asia-Pacific time zones.