Technical Service Manager: Point of Sale at Shoprite Group of Companies

Purpose of the Job    

• The purpose of the Senior Technical Services Manager is to effectively drive central and store Point of Service system availability, performing technical support and system administration activities, and providing efficient, fit for-purpose solutions within Shoprite Point of Services Platforms Portfolio, for all current and future applications and projects.
• As a Senior Technical Services Manager, this involves leveraging expert-level system engineering knowledge on designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining processes and documentation to ensure best use of system capability.
• This role collaborates with various IT teams, guiding and advising on system engineering best practise within area of technology, whilst managing system incidents, escalations, and resolutions, and ensuring vendors efficiently deliver on system installation, upgrades, and incident resolutions as per agreed service levels and quality standards.

Job Objectives    

• Leads projects, feature and upgrades through delivery, using appropriate methodologies while ensuring delivery within sanctioned parameters
• Leads hybrid agile teams in delivering iteratively, using an appropriate agile methodology. Coaches and leads teams to deliver on committed backlog
• Using best practice methods and tools, ensures that programme/project risks and issues are appropriately identified, assessed and mitigated
• Manages communication to all internal and external stakeholders on programmes , projects or features
• Ensures visibility of IT resources, workloads, allocation, availability, and skills. Manages resource scheduling in the most optimal and efficient way possible
• Manages budgets, costs, and payments within the scope of a relevant programme/project or features for its successful delivery
• Oversee and build process of endpoints, by analysing business and customer requirements to ensure successful delivery of development projects/ features and changes as required.
• Ensure environments, and implementation is managed as per the technological needs 
• Overseeing the technological equipment and device blueprint to ensure functionality, efficiency and optimal usage
• Informing the purchase of efficient and cost-effective technological equipment/ hardware and devices
• Oversee, and take ultimate accountability of all technology operations enabling it to effectively deliver through active sponsorship, leadership, and business involvement in specific initiatives to ensure they meet time, cost and quality requirements
• Accountable for providing project leadership, managing, and coordinating the coherent activities needed to design, develop, and release services or service changes
• Leverages teams' expertise, and shares information and best practices to optimize work results. Encourages, empowers and enables the team to deliver performance objectives.
• Provide expert guidance on efficient technical administration and support for system upgrades, system environments, enhancements, fixes, and overall operational structure
• Assess and optimise the overall availability, architecture, and content of central systems for improved performance
• Collaborate with relevant stakeholders to conduct change assessments, participate in change control boards, and implement necessary change documentation and procedures
• Plan and execute the installation, upgrades, configurations, environments/ versions and testing of systems and associated technologies to ensure stability and reliability
• Organise and manage the creation and updating of system documentation and standard operating procedures
• Design and deploy monitoring solutions to ensure system availability of all central applications, components and clusters in the production environment to ensure peak performance and functionality
• Monitor system performance and recommend improvements central applications/components and store - based components)
• Deploy monitoring solutions for application clusters, transaction flow, queues, locks etc.
• Monitor exchange between GK Central, Central Scale solution and store-based components
• Monitor configuration from GK Central to all store endpoints (HIS/ POS/ SCO)
• Monitor store-based components to ensure optimal system performance (MFS, Firebird/ Derby, `HIS, POS and CSO)
• Consult on security vulnerability mitigation and investigation processes, conducting thorough research into potential solutions, developing scripts, and implementing essential security measures
• Resolve P1 and P2 technical issues and system outages
• Analyse incidents to provide expert-level technical support, identify escalation requirements, and ensure the resolution of all logged incidents/problems within the designated technology area in compliance with agreed Service Level Agreements (SLA) and quality standards
• Engage with various vendors and third parties to guarantee that all incidents are recorded, and vendors supply relevant updates at each stage of the query resolution process in alignment with the established SLA
• Coordinate technical support activities with third-party or technology partners/vendors for installations, upgrades, or the resolution of escalated incidents
• Manage the allocation of available vendor hours in accordance with the support contract to optimise resource utilisation
• Conduct thorough research to identify tailored solutions aimed at enhancing central applications/ components and technology utilisation
• Evaluate existing security vulnerability processes and recommend actionable measures, including the creation of scripts and the implementation of necessary security protocols
• Analyse and develop machine images through dedicated research and development to achieve optimal efficiency and size reduction
• Optimise and streamline processes of store-based components to ensure optimal system performance (MFS, Firebird/ Derby, `HIS, POS and CSO)

Qualifications    

• Degree or Diploma in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field - (essential)
• Relevant industry or system certifications - (essential). 

Experience    

• 6 years’ experience as a Systems Engineer or similar role with expert level knowledge and extensive experience in designing, implementing, administering solutions and system support for highly complex Point of Sale systems (i.e., software applications and peripheral infrastructure, DBs, etc.) - (essential).
• Solid functional experience of incident response, diagnostic activities, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Corrective Action Plans, and advanced troubleshooting - (essential). 
• Experience with scripting and/or automated deployments using Python, PowerShell, Bash, etc. – (highly beneficial).
• Experience with Linux, SQL, Java, C#, Python, Apache Tomcat technologies – (highly beneficial).
• Experience with GK OmniPOS, GK `Store Manager, UCON, SDC/ HIS/ JMS Queues (highly beneficial)
• Experience with Kubernetes Cluster Management (Essential)
• Experience in DevOPS CI/CD pipeline (Essential)
• Experience with Store Labelling solutions (Scale labels, store labels)

Knowledge and Skills    

• Thorough knowledge of POS system and Scale administration within a large system infrastructure environment - (essential).
• Strong proficiency in MS Office 365 – (essential).

Closing Date    

• 2026/03/05