Technical Head of Absa Access Platform at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• The Technical Head of the Absa Access Platform teams will serve as the Delivery Lead and Engineering Manager for multiple teams within the Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) Business Unit. This role is crucial in steering the strategic direction, development, and delivery of the Absa Access Platform, ensuring it aligns with business objectives and leverages the latest technological advancements. Given the platform's highly technical nature, this position demands strong technical proficiency across all aspects of product development.

Job Description

About Absa Access:

• Absa Access is a comprehensive digital platform designed to streamline and enhance the banking experience for Corporate and Investment clients. It integrates various banking services and solutions into a single, unified platform, providing clients with seamless access to a wide range of financial products and services. Key features of Absa Access include:
• Unified Access: Clients can access multiple banking services through a single platform, including payments, cash management, trade finance, and foreign exchange.
• Advanced Security: The platform employs robust security measures, including multi-factor authentication and advanced encryption, to ensure the safety and integrity of client data.
• Real-Time Processing: Absa Access supports real-time processing of transactions, enabling clients to manage their finances efficiently and effectively.
• Customizable Solutions: The platform offers customizable solutions tailored across various geographies to meet the specific needs of our diverse client base, enhancing their overall banking experience.
• Speed of Delivery: The platform teams collaborate closely with multiple internal development teams that are focused on creating client-facing value propositions for our customers. The services and methodologies established within the platform are designed to expedite the delivery of business value by the broader developer community.

Key Responsibilities:

Leadership and People Management:

• Lead and manage multiple engineering teams, fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture.
• Provide strategic direction and technical leadership to ensure the successful delivery of platform initiatives.
• Mentor and develop team members, promoting continuous learning and professional growth.
• 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 in all squad related activity to drive a higher quality design and deployment of technical products and services 

Project and Delivery Management:

• Oversee the planning, execution, and delivery of platform projects, ensuring they are completed on time, within scope, and budget.
• Implement and maintain best practices in agile methodologies, project management, and software development lifecycle (SDLC).
• Coordinate with cross-functional teams, including marketing, IT, and customer service, to ensure seamless project integration and delivery.
• Proactively engage with across Group and Business Technology and broader enablement functions to drive alignment & leading practice in technology design and deployment 
• With fluency in the deployment of agile methodologies, resource and manage the appropriate number and nature (skill and capability) of squad based teams to execute on both Run and Change elements of delivery 

Technical Expertise:

• Drive the design, development, and deployment of scalable and robust platform solutions.
• Ensure the platform architecture aligns with industry best practices and Absa's strategic goals.
• Stay abreast of emerging technologies and trends, integrating relevant advancements into the platform.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Collaborate with senior management and key stakeholders to define platform strategy and roadmap.
• Communicate project status, risks, and opportunities to stakeholders, ensuring transparency and alignment.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with internal and external partners to support platform objectives.

Quality and Performance:

• Establish and enforce quality standards, ensuring the platform meets performance, security, and reliability requirements.
• Implement monitoring and evaluation processes to track platform performance and identify areas for improvement.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance platform capabilities and user experience.

Product and Service Direction Setting, Solution Design and Performance Management:

• Work with the Head of Platforms and Architecture & business product owners to define the product & technical strategy (Full Stack – End to End).
• Act as the single point of partnership & assume responsibility for managing the senior business interface (product owner) relationship.
• Apply design thinking practices to deliver architecturally sound technical product & service solutions (and explain / guide / coach others on this architecture holistically and technically).
• Collaborate across the tech value chain (Group Technology) to guide the business on the appropriate technical solution (cost to value) & the range of strategic technical choices to be made.
• Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design & direction of the Group Architecture standards, principles, preferences & practices. Short term deployment must align to strategic long term delivery.
• Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design and direction of the Group Infrastructure standards and practices e.g. OLA’s, IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, Containerisation etc.
• Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of products and services (all applications) – ensuring ongoing optimization & cost to value for our businesses (think bank wide).

DevOps:

• Leverage the required expert level (own) skill & knowledge in architecture & Infrastructure, design and manage all development & development practices & outputs across squads (apply knowledge on virtualization, containerization, automation, storage & serverless technologies (e.g. AWS, Azure, & on prem-Cloud, etc.).
• Ensure the most optimal design & deployment of technical products and services in the organization (via pipeline – not manually) 
• Ensure solution designs deliver on the key technical principles of: self-service, repeatability, testability, scalability & resilience 
• Guide code development practices and processes through an understanding of complex concepts and developmental practices such as threading, parallel processing, asynchronous programming, domain driven design, lambdas etc. & coding language expertise (predominantly .NET but Python, Java, Bash scripting are also advantageous) 
• Guide & ensure the delivery of quality development (code) based on own experience in developing across a range of applications including but not limited to: server side, client side, web (REST, JSON), socket based programming, batch & real time, building architectural patterns, security / security domains) 
• Effectively leverage the DevOps capabilities within the broader group to ensure maximum customer impact & minimum business risk 
• Manage the maintenance & optimization of applications, products & services as a ‘way of doing things / culture’ within the development teams. You are fully accountable for the longevity of applications aligned to Group Architectural practices 

Financial & Vendor Management, Risk & Governance:

• 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 
• 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) 

Qualifications and Experience:

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field. 

Experience:

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
• Proven track record of managing large-scale platform projects within the financial services or similar industry.
• Extensive experience with agile methodologies, project management, and SDLC.

Technical skills:

• Strong knowledge of platform architecture, cloud computing, and modern software development practices.
• Proficiency in C# (.NET) programming language
• Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).

Soft Skills:

• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology