Head Technical Architecture

Empowering Africa's tomorrow, together…one story at a time. With over years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

Head of Platforms and Engineering for IB Global Markets Technology, strong leadership, technical expertise, and ideally Global Markets experience required. Lead the agile design, deployment and ongoing optimisation and evolution of enterprise wide technology platforms including but not limited to: Virtual Platforms, Middleware Systems Technology, Mainframe, Storage and APIs.

This includes:

Strategic direction setting and the transitioning/modernisation of the organisation to virtualisation and containerisation, cost transparency and optimisation, self-service and provisioning at the point of interaction with our customers.

Job Description

Skills and experience required:

1. 15+ years technology experience
2. Relevant B-Degree in Computer Science OR equivalent level of industry certification in Technical field with minimum requirements of experience & practical application is evident
3. Experience and proven track record defining enterprise wide technical strategies
4. Experience in leading large and multifaceted teams
5. Engineering Leadership in Financial Services
6. Hands-on experience with Trading and Risk Platforms
7. Deep understanding of low-latency networks, multicast, market connectivity, and colocation strategies for trading environments.
8. Expertise in middleware technologies (Kafka, Tibco, Solace, MQ), database performance, and caching strategies.
9. Familiarity with market connectivity, order management systems (OMS), and execution management systems (EMS).
10. Data Centers and Operational Resilience: Experience in data center strategy, hybrid cloud integration, and disaster recovery planning.
11. Understanding of high-availability architectures, IT service continuity, and regulatory requirements (e.g., BCBS, operational resilience guidelines).
12. Leadership and Strategic Thinking: Ability to develop and execute a technology roadmap for compute, storage, and networking aligned with trading and business needs.
13. Strong stakeholder management, collaborating with trading desks, operations, and regulators to ensure robust and scalable market infrastructure.
14. Experience as an agile practitioner and knowledge or experience of other delivery methodologies
15. Excellent communication, analytical skills and decision making ability in collaborative environments
16. Experience with test-driven development and domain driven design
17. Experience with open-source relational databases

Key Accountabilities:

1. Platform Technologies Direction Setting, Solution Design & Performance Management
2. Assume one stop shop accountability for the delivery of 'Platforms as a Service' optimally & sustainably
3. Proactively & meaningfully collaborate across the value chain in the design & delivery of sustainable Platform Strategies and Solutions
4. Conduct ongoing assessments of our existing platform, API & storage technologies & build & communicate relevant insights (consumption, cost etc.) for business decision making
5. Leverage expertise in emerging technologies, benchmarks & architecture as well as the broader organisation business strategies to define the appropriate Platforms strategy for the organisation
6. Lead & facilitate the design of the appropriate platform solutions & realise our goal to provide 'platforms as a service'
7. Apply design thinking practices to deliver architecturally sound platform solutions (and explain / guide / coach others on this architecture holistically and technically)
8. Lead the detailed scoping, prioritisation & integration planning for the design & deployment of platform services with & across multiple stakeholder groups (All businesses)
9. Ensure the most optimal design & deployment of platform technologies in the organization (via pipeline – not manually)
10. Manage all development & development practices & outputs across platform teams
11. Ensure strategies & associated platform solutions deliver on the key technical principles of: self-service, repeatability, testability, scalability & resilience
12. Effectively manage the DevOps & Decomm pipelines & associated releases, risk management for maximum customer impact & minimum business risk
13. Embed a culture of ongoing maintenance & optimization of platforms as a 'way of doing things'.
14. You are fully accountable for the longevity of solutions.
15. Drive the implementation of an optimised platform base (containerisation, virtualisation) including the optimisation & or decommissioning of legacy platform technologies
16. Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design & direction of the Group Architecture standards, principles, preferences & practices.
17. Short term deployment must align to strategic long term delivery.
18. Define, Agree and manage service offerings and SLAs across multiple stakeholder groups (agree annually and measure on a monthly basis).
19. Investigate new ways of work to improve sustainability in services and improve platform resilience, stability, scalability & flexibility and provide solutions aligned with the overall Technology strategy for the bank.
20. Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of platforms & associated products & services – ensuring ongoing optimization & cost to value for our businesses (think bank wide)
21. Design & leverage dashboards & related insights to influence the direction of Technology for the bank & an overall improvement in the bank's customer experience
22. Continuously coach & mentor platform teams & the broader set of stakeholders on the optimal usage, consumption, development, optimisation etc. of platform technologies
23. Drive awareness and collaboration of Platforms services to achieve optimal customer consumption and cost efficiencies.
24. Attend relevant forums where direction is taken in terms of the future development of Infrastructure Services Africa in management and methodology.

Accountability: Build sustainable practices

1. Proactively engage with stakeholders to ensure alignment in the utilisation and maintenance of platforms.
2. Ensure that the various platform teams are adequately skilled and resourced to ensure sustainability.
3. Analyse the effectiveness of practices, processes and systems in use in the distributed technologies teams and make recommendations for improvements.
4. 'Stay ahead' of business needs through proactive engagement with business leaders
5. Stay ahead of the curve on emerging technologies & associated technology practices
6. Create & on an ongoing basis refine enterprise wide guidelines for Platform Services & Technologies
7. Challenge established Group Technology (e.g. architecture, infrastructure) practices and define new practices for the sustainability & competitiveness of the organisation.

Accountability: People Management

1. Set and cascade strategic direction across the team
2. Proactively attract, recruit, develop, retain, reward & deploy a diverse resource base aligned to an ever evolving tech environment (ahead of demand)
3. Build a high performance team environment & culture 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.)
4. Assume one stop shop accountability for the right people in the right teams to deliver on our tech strategy (always!)
5. Leverage coaching techniques in all squad related activity to drive a higher quality design and deployment of technical products and services
6. Contribute to the ongoing evolution & design of leading people practices for the effective attraction & retention of a highly skilled technical workforce
7. Contribute to the development of technical teams by sharing best practices and specialist knowledge on an ongoing basis

Education

Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank. Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised.