Associate Operations Engineer

Sanlam; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 420,000 - 700,000; Full time

Job summary

Sanlam Life and Savings seeks an Operations Engineer to manage the day-to-day health of SBI data platforms, including on-prem and AWS workloads. You’ll perform patching, access administration, monitoring, and incident support to keep platforms reliable and cost-efficient.

You will collaborate with the Operations Manager, engineering teams and workload groups, ensuring governance, documentation and continuous improvement across the SBI environment.

Qualifications

• 1–3 years’ experience in IT operations, infrastructure support or cloud operations.
• Experience patching, monitoring and incident handling across production systems.
• Experience following operational procedures and maintaining records across teams.

Responsibilities

• Patch and maintain SBI-owned servers, WhereScape, Tableau, and AWS resources.
• Administer IAM, RBAC, service accounts and access reviews.
• Monitor dashboards, backups, capacity and runbooks; escalate incidents as required.
• Maintain incident records, stakeholder updates and supporting runbooks.
• Produce weekly operational reporting and track actions with teams and vendors.

Skills

IT operations

Incident triage

Documentation

Learning agility

Education

Diploma/Bachelor’s in IT

Tools

Windows

Linux

AWS

SQL

Job description

Who are we?

Sanlam Life and Savings (SLS) is focused on serving our retail and corporate clients in South Africa and further developing our strategic advantages in the South African market. Sanlam Life and Savings consists of the following business units Retail Mass, Corporate, Risk and Savings, Glacier and various business enabling functions. The Sanlam Life and Savings Office provides strategic direction, coordination and support to the four clusters, as well as performing governance oversight that includes assurance provided by second line of defense functions in SLS, to enable us to meet our business objectives.

What will you do?

The Data Platform Operations Engineer supports the day-to-day operational management of Sanlam Business Intelligence’s (SBI) data platforms and workloads across the on-premise and AWS environments. Working under the direction of the Operations Manager, the role performs defined operational checks, patching and platform maintenance, access administration, monitoring, first-line triage, housekeeping and coordination activities, so that the engineering and data hub teams can stay focused on delivery.

You will play a hands-on role in keeping the platforms healthy, secure and cost-efficient, and an equally important role in operational follow-through, maintaining accurate operational records, tracking incidents, requests and changes to closure across SBI, SGT, BCX, the Sanlam data platform teams and vendors, and helping to improve the reliability, governance and efficiency of the SBI environment. The role works closely with the Operations Manager, the Tech& engineering team and the data hub (Workload) teams. Workload teams remain accountable for application logic, data quality and workload-specific resolution, and complex technical resolution sits with the engineering and platform teams.

What will make you successful in this role?

Platform Maintenance and Patching

• Patch and maintain SBI-owned servers, WhereScape, Tableau, AWS resources and new cloud workload application servers in line with approved runbooks and maintenance windows.
• Complete routine AWS housekeeping and expand failed or blocked maintenance activities.

Access and Security Administration

• Administer approved IAM and RBAC access, service accounts, leaver and mover access, and dormant accounts in line with security requirements.
• Support access reviews and manage GitHub and WhereScape repositories.

Monitoring, Triage and Incident Support

• Complete daily and weekly operational checks across alerts, dashboards, scheduled processing, backups, snapshots and capacity.
• Monitor Automic and WhereScape runs, address stuck or failed jobs, and retry Raw Vault loads where approved.
• Provide first-line support for Cloudera, platform and performance incidents, escalating and coordinating resolution where required.
• Maintain accurate incident records, stakeholder updates and supporting runbooks.

Coordination, Follow-through and Reporting

• Maintain registers for incidents, service requests, changes, risks and recurring actions.
• Track outstanding actions with Workload teams, SGT, BCX, the cloud team, Sanlam data platform teams and vendors.
• Produce weekly operational reporting and highlight recurring failures, alerts and manual interventions.

Cost, Capacity and Lifecycle Hygiene

• Monitor AWS costs, usage, alerts and tagging compliance, and support approved optimisation actions.
• Maintain accurate inventories of platforms, cloud resources and applications.
• Track certificates, credentials, software end-of-life dates, licences and support contracts.
• Support the Cloudera and HANA rampdown through 2027 and 2028, including inventories, usage tracking, housekeeping and capacity reporting.

Governance, Readiness and Continuous Improvement

• Support IT governance, access reviews, audits, risk remediation and DR planning and testing.
• Ensure monitoring, runbooks, support contacts, escalation paths, access models and patching ownership are in place for new workloads.
• Keep operational documentation current and identify opportunities for standardisation and automation.

Qualifications And Experience

• National Diploma or Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• An AWS certification (for example AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or AWS Certified SysOps Administrator) is advantageous.
• 1-3 years’ experience in an IT operations, infrastructure support, cloud operations or technical support role.
• Experience supporting production systems, including patching, monitoring, incident and request handling and access administration.
• Experience following operational procedures, maintaining accurate records and following up actions across teams and service providers.
• Experience in a BI environment is advantageous.

Knowledge And Skills

• Sound knowledge of IT operations, including incident, request, change and patch management.
• Basic Windows, Linux, AWS and SQL skills, with an understanding of batch processing and data loads.
• Knowledge of RBAC, access governance, security and regulatory requirements.
• Strong troubleshooting, incident triage, escalation and operational process discipline.
• Accurate record-keeping, documentation and audit evidence management.
• Effective stakeholder communication and coordination across teams, vendors and service providers.
• Focus on platform hygiene, capacity management, continuous improvement, standardisation and automation.
• Ability to learn quickly and adapt to new tools, technologies and platforms.

Advantageous

• AWS (EC2, EBS, IAM, CloudWatch and cost management tooling)
• Scheduling or batch-processing tools
• Monitoring and alerting tools
• Identity and access administration
• Scripting for routine automation (Bash, PowerShell or Python)
• GitHub and version control

Personal attributes

• Reliability
• Attention to detail
• Accountability.
• Composure under pressure
• Clear communication
• Problem-solving
• Learning agility

Core competencies

• Cultivates Innovation
• Client Focus
• Drive Results
• Collaborates
• Flexibility and adaptability

The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.