Lead Technology

Absa Ins & Fin Advise(Pty; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Absa Ins & Fin Advise(Pty) is seeking a leader to drive enterprise-wide technology products with full-stack ownership. You will collaborate with the CIO and business product owners to shape strategy, own delivery risk, and ensure architecture meets bank-wide standards across front-end, back-end, and integration layers.

You will guide design decisions, manage cross-squad deployments, and optimize performance while aligning with infrastructure principles and cost-to-value considerations.

Qualifications

• Experience leading end-to-end product and service design in enterprise tech environments.
• Ability to translate business needs into technically sound architecture and roadmaps.
• Proven capability to manage senior stakeholder relationships (product owner level).

Responsibilities

• Define product and technical strategy with CIO and business owners.
• Own delivery accountability for products and solutions with cross-functional teams.
• Lead design of blueprints aligned to short, medium, and long-term strategy.
• Guide across the tech value chain to select cost-effective, strategic solutions.
• Monitor performance and optimize cost-to-value across applications.

Skills

Agile

Solution design

DevOps

Cloud architecture

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Java

C++

Python

Leadership

Tools

Kubernetes

Jenkins

TeamCity

Artifactory

Powershell

CLM Tools

Job description

Empowering Africa's tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 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.

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 agile solution design, deployment & ongoing optimization & evolution of enterprise wide technology products and services (full stack engineering & ownership / control) in low complexity environments.

Job Description

Product & Service Direction Setting, Solution Design & Performance Management

• Work with the CIO & 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
• Assume one stop shop accountability for the delivery of the product & solutions (risk cannot be outsourced to vendors)
• Apply design thinking practices to deliver architecturally sound technical product & service solutions (and explain / guide / coach others on this architecture holistically and technically)
• Lead & facilitate the design of the product & or service solution blueprints aligned to the organization strategy (Short, Medium & Long Term)
• Collaborate across the tech value chain (CSO, CTO, etc.) to guide the business on the appropriate technical solution (cost to value) & the range of strategic technical choices to be made
• Lead the detailed scoping, prioritisation & integration planning for the design & deployment of products & services with & across multiple stakeholder groups (Front End, Back End & Integration) - (aligned to solution blueprints)
• 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 (with deep knowledge & understanding of context within which we develop architecturally & infrastructurally)

• 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, Google, & on prem-Cloud, etc.)
• Ensure the most optimal design & deployment of technical products and services in the organization (via pipeline - not manually)
• Design & Implement Automation Testing, Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery Strategies & frameworks across squads for effective solution development & deployment (understand and apply expert knowledge in e.g. Kubernetes, Jenkins, TeamCity, Arifactory, MS Powershell, Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) Tools, APM Tools (e.g. NewRelic & Splunk) etc.
• 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 (e.g. Java, C++, Groovy, Python, Bash, Perl, Ruby etc.)
• 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 (SOAP, REST, JSON), socket based programming, batch & real time, building architectural patterns, security / security domains)
• Effectively manage the DevOps pipeline & associated releases for 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 application