Senior Manager Development and DevOps

Woolworths Financial Services; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 1,400,000 - 1,900,000; Full time

Job summary

Woolworths Financial Services is seeking a senior leader to guide Developers and DevOps professionals in the Digital Factory. You will embed standards, quality, security, and reporting, while owning deployment and operations across resources, schedules and risk management.

You will set direction, drive operational excellence, lead hiring and performance management, and collaborate across engineering, QA, IT security, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable solutions.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience.
• 3–5+ years in DevOps and 3–5 years in technical leadership/management.
• Deep understanding of microservices, event-driven, or modular architectures.
• 8+ years IT experience with hands-on cloud expertise (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Strong agile delivery, Lean/SAFe/ scrum experience, and hybrid methods.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the Development and DevOps vision aligned to IT and business goals.
• Develop long-term roadmaps for capacity, scalability, and platform reliability.
• Lead cross-functional teams and drive DevOps adoption and agile maturity.
• Oversee SDLC, quality assurance, secure coding, and timely delivery.
• Oversee CI/CD pipelines and cloud platforms for hosting and scaling.
• Govern change, reporting to stakeholders, and manage risks and budgets.

Skills

Technical leadership

People management

Strategic thinking

Collaboration

Problem solving

Resilience & Agility

Node.js

.NET Core

Angular

React

Spring Boot

Low-code platforms

AWS

Azure

GCP

Terraform

Grafana

ELK Stack

DataDog

Git

GitHub

GitLab

Jira

Confluence

Kubernetes

Docker

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Git

GitHub

GitLab

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

Grafana

ELK

DataDog

Jenkins

Bitbucket

GitHub Actions

Job description

The purpose of this role is to lead the Developers and DevOps professionals and provide leadership to the WFS Digital Factory.

This would include but not limited to embedment of standards, quality and best practices, security, reporting, configuration and build, testing, planning, and deployment of solutions. The incumbent will be accountable for all aspects of deployment and technical operations including technical project resources (partners/subcontractors or staff), scheduling, risk management, internal and external communication to stakeholders, status reporting, and resource management. The individual will also be required to set direction for the area and be responsible for driving operational excellence.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Strategy and Leadership

• Define and execute the Development and DevOps vision and strategy aligned to broader IT and business goals.
• Develop long-term roadmaps for team capacity, systems scalability, and platform reliability.
• Lead cross-functional teams with a focus on engineering culture, DevOps adoption, and agile maturity.
• Serve as a key decision-maker for application architecture, tooling, and development standards.
• Lead hiring, mentoring, and performance management across development and DevOps roles.
• Act as a liaison between software engineering, QA, operations, infrastructure, and cybersecurity teams.
• Collaborate and support the development of the digital strategy and plan

Software Development Oversight

• Manage full software development lifecycle (SDLC) including design, development, code review, testing, release, and maintenance.
• Oversee engineering quality assurance, ensuring coding standards, test coverage, and secure coding practices.
• Coordinate with product management and stakeholders to ensure timely, on-scope delivery.
• Facilitate agile ceremonies and champion lean/agile practices (e.g., Scrum, SAFe, or Kanban).
• Be involved in the Lower-Level solution design in collaboration with the Solution Architect

DevOps Engineering and Infrastructure

• Oversee CI/CD pipeline development and maintenance using tools such as Jenkins, Bitbucket, GitHub, Sonarqube, Tenable.io, Terraform, QA test framework, etc.
• Implement and maintain containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS/EKS)
• Lead efforts for observability — monitoring, logging, alerting, and APM (e.g., Grafana, ELK, DataDog, etc.)
• Collaborate with Information Security to embed DevSecOps practices.
• Manage public/hybrid cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) for application hosting, deployment, and scaling.
• Be involved in the Lower-Level solution design in collaboration with the Solution Architect

Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Establish change management controls and deployment governance in line with ITIL or equivalent frameworks
• Present progress reports, risk assessments, and incident post-mortems to senior stakeholders
• Ensure appropriate documentation for software, environments, and infrastructure.
• Maintain audit-readiness and support internal and external compliance assessments
• Manage costs according to budget, as it relates to technology, people and process

Key KPI’s and Metrics

• Deployment frequency: Time-to-market for new releases
• Change failure rate: % of changes that result in service incidents
• Mean time to recovery (MTTR): Average time to recover from incidents
• Uptime / SLA adherence: Application availability and performance
• Automation coverage: % of infrastructure managed as code
• Team engagement: Retention, satisfaction, and professional growth of team members

KEY COMPETENCIES:

• Technical Leadership – Able to guide deep technical discussions and make strategic trade-offs
• People Management – Skilled at growing, mentoring, and leading high-performing teams
• Strategic Thinking – Aligns technical roadmap with business vision
• Collaboration – Works effectively across cross-functional teams and stakeholders
• Problem Solving – Handles complex technical and operational issues with a calm, analytical mindset
• Resilience & Agility – Thrives in fast-paced, change-driven environments

TECHNICAL EXPERTISE

• Frameworks: Node.js, .NET Core, Angular, React, Spring Boot
• Low-code platforms (e.g. OutSystems)
• Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP (including deep knowledge of the cloud platforms services)
• IaC: Terraform
• Monitoring: Grafana, ELK Stack, DataDog
• Version Control: Git, GitHub, GitLab
• Agile Tools: Jira, Confluence

MINIMUM QUALIFICATION

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

• 10+ years of software development experience, including at least 3–5 years in DevOps
• 3 - 5 years technical leadership/management experience
• Deep understanding of software architecture patterns (microservices, event-driven, monolith-to-modular transition)
• 10 years IT experience
• 8 Years of solid cloud experience (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Hands-on experience with:

Containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)

Public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Strong background in agile delivery and lean product development, as well as Waterfall, and hybrid of these.

• Experience working in regulated industries (e.g., banking)
• Experience in leading Native Mobile application development (e.g. iOS, Android, Hybrid)

Woolworths Financial Services is a proud South African brand, who is committed to transformation. Meeting our employment equity goals will be taken into account in our recruitment decisions.