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Belonging at Absa

Absa is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from suitably qualified individuals from diverse backgrounds. In support of our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) commitments and Employment Equity objectives, preference may be given to candidates from underrepresented designated groups, including persons with disabilities. We encourage applicants who may require reasonable accommodation during the recruitment process to let us know so that appropriate support can be provided.

Job Summary

Lead the strategy, design, deployment, optimisation, governance and ongoing evolution of Absa’ Infrastructure Automation and Zero-Touch Platforms capability.

The role is accountable for establishing and scaling a secure, compliant, resilient and highly automated infrastructure ecosystem across Africa Regional markets, enabling the provisioning, configuration, monitoring, security management and lifecycle management of infrastructure through automation with minimal manual intervention.

Working across Group Technology, Country Technology teams, Infrastructure, Security, Risk and Architecture functions, the role will define and execute the regional automation and platform strategy, ensuring alignment to Group technology standards while meeting local market regulatory and legislative requirements. The role will establish a "Platforms as a Service" approach to infrastructure delivery, driving operational excellence, engineering maturity, service reliability, cost optimisation and enhanced security across the region.

A key mandate is to build and mature a capability that does not currently exist within Africa Regions, transforming infrastructure operations from manual processes to scalable, policy-driven, automated platforms.

Job Description

Accountability: Platform Direction Setting, Strategy & Performance Management

Africa Regions Strategy

• Define and execute the Africa Regions Zero-Touch Infrastructure and Platform Engineering strategy.
• Establish the vision, strategic roadmap and operating model for infrastructure automation across all Africa Regional markets.
• Partner with Group CIO, Infrastructure, Security and Architecture leadership to ensure alignment with enterprise technology strategy.
• Drive adoption of Infrastructure as Code, Platform Engineering, DevSecOps and Site Reliability Engineering practices across the region.
• Create a scalable and reusable infrastructure delivery model capable of supporting multiple countries and differing regulatory landscapes.

Regional Market Enablement

• Work with country technology leadership teams to understand market-specific business, technology and regulatory requirements.
• Design standardised infrastructure platforms that balance regional consistency with local market requirements.
• Provide strategic oversight for technology enablement in markets requiring legislative controls, sovereign hosting requirements or enhanced security obligations.
• Ensure infrastructure solutions support future business growth across Africa Regions.

Platforms as a Service

• Positively contribute to the organisation-wide platform strategy and achievement of end-to-end "Platforms as a Service".
• Establish self-service infrastructure capabilities through standardised and automated platform services.
• Enable technology teams to consume infrastructure services through automated provisioning pipelines rather than manual deployment processes.
• Create reusable platform assets that improve speed, consistency and quality of delivery.

Performance Optimisation

• Take accountability for the strategic and operational performance of infrastructure platforms across Africa Regions.
• Drive continuous optimisation of service reliability, availability, scalability and customer experience.
• Define and implement platform performance metrics and reporting frameworks.
• Leverage operational, engineering and customer insights to identify improvement opportunities and influence strategic decisions.

Accountability: Infrastructure Platform Engineering & Delivery

Enterprise Scale Platform Ownership

• Take end-to-end accountability for the design, resilience, scalability and operational performance of large-scale infrastructure platforms supporting critical banking workloads.
• Ensure infrastructure platforms can support high transaction volumes, high availability requirements and evolving business demands across Africa Regions.
• Drive architectural decisions that improve platform performance, resilience, recoverability and operational efficiency.
• Lead capacity planning, platform lifecycle management and infrastructure modernisation initiatives.
• Ensure platforms are engineered to support both current and future business growth requirements across multiple markets.

Infrastructure Automation

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise-scale infrastructure automation solutions.
• Ensure infrastructure provisioning, configuration, patching, monitoring and lifecycle management are delivered through automation-first principles.
• Drive adoption of Infrastructure as Code practices across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Establish automation standards, patterns and controls for all infrastructure services.

Engineering Excellence

• Take accountability for the end-to-end design, delivery and lifecycle management of automated infrastructure platforms.
• Ensure solutions are architecturally sound, resilient, scalable, testable and secure.
• Lead engineering practices that promote repeatability, standardisation and operational efficiency.
• Serve as the executive escalation point for critical platform and infrastructure incidents.

DevSecOps & Continuous Delivery

• Ensure infrastructure solutions are deployed and managed through automated pipelines rather than manual processes.
• Lead continuous integration and continuous delivery strategies for infrastructure services.
• Drive implementation of security-by-design and policy-as-code principles.
• Establish automated testing and validation practices across infrastructure deployments.

Reliability & Operational Excellence

• Drive implementation of observability, automated monitoring and self-healing capabilities.
• Reduce operational risk through elimination of configuration drift and manual intervention.
• Improve service resiliency and recovery capabilities across regional markets.
• Lead continuous improvement of platform stability and operational performance.

Accountability: Risk, Security, Governance & Compliance

• Carry end-to-end accountability for infrastructure platform risk management across Africa Regions.
• Ensure alignment with Enterprise Risk Management Frameworks, regulatory requirements and Group Technology standards.
• Represent Infrastructure Automation and Platform Engineering functions in governance, audit and risk forums.
• Establish automated compliance controls, security guardrails and governance mechanisms.
• Drive implementation of Compliance-as-Code and Policy-as-Code capabilities.
• Ensure solutions support local legislative requirements relating to security, data residency and operational resilience.
• Maintain ongoing readiness for internal, external and regulatory audits.

Accountability: Financial & Vendor Management

• Develop and manage the regional infrastructure automation and platform investment strategy.
• Drive optimisation of infrastructure costs while balancing resilience, scalability and customer outcomes.
• Establish and monitor platform-specific cost models and value realisation measures.
• Evaluate and select strategic technology partners, products and services.
• Lead vendor management activities and ensure technology investments deliver measurable business value.
• Deliver strategic outcomes within approved financial parameters.

Accountability: Leadership & Capability Development

• Set and cascade the infrastructure automation vision and strategy across Africa Regions.
• Build and lead a high-performing team of Infrastructure Automation, Platform Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering professionals.
• Develop regional engineering capability through coaching, mentoring and strategic talent development.
• Foster a culture of innovation, engineering excellence and continuous improvement.
• Build strong partnerships across Group Technology, Country Technology, Security, Architecture and Operations teams.
• Enable regional adoption of automation and platform engineering practices at scale.

Experience

Essential

• 10+ years technology leadership experience with at least 5 years in executive or senior technology leadership roles.
• Proven experience leading large-scale infrastructure, cloud, platform engineering or automation functions.
• Demonstrated success delivering enterprise infrastructure transformation programmes.
• Experience operating across multiple countries and highly regulated environments.
• Deep understanding of infrastructure platforms, cloud technologies, automation frameworks, security and risk management.
• Proven ability to influence executive stakeholders across large and complex organisations.

Preferred

• Financial Services or Banking experience.
• Pan-African or multinational operating environment experience.
• Experience establishing Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Automation or Zero-Touch Operations capabilities.
• Experience leading large-scale cloud and infrastructure modernisation programmes.

Education

Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology