Senior Manager Development and DevOps

Woolworths Financial Services; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 1,800,000 - 2,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Woolworths Financial Services is seeking a proven technology leader to head the Developers and DevOps professionals within the WFS Digital Factory. You will set standards, drive security, quality and deployment of solutions, and manage resources, risks, and stakeholder communications.

You will lead strategy, architecture decisions, governance, and operational excellence across SDLC, IaC, CI/CD, cloud platforms, and observability, ensuring scalable, secure, and high-velocity software delivery in

Qualifications

• Computer Science/Information Systems/Mathematics/Engineering degree.
• AWS/Azure certifications.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• Oversee CI/CD pipeline development and maintenance using tools such as Jenkins, Bitbucket, GitHub, Sonarqube, Tenable.io, Terraform, QA test framework, etc.
• Champion infrastructure as code (IaC) practices using Terraform, 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.
• Automate manual operational tasks
• Be involved in the Lower-Level solution design in collaboration with the Solution Architect.
• 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
• 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
• Code quality: Test coverage, bug rate, code review compliance
• Team engagement: Retention, satisfaction, and professional growth of team members
• Languages: JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, Python, Java, Go, Swift, Kotlin
• 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)
• CI/CD: Jenkins, Bitbucket pipelines
• IaC: Terraform
• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm
• Monitoring: Grafana, ELK Stack, DataDog
• Version Control: Git, GitHub, GitLab
• Agile Tools: Jira, Confluence

Skills

Technical Leadership

People Management

Strategic Thinking

Collaboration

Problem Solving

Resilience & Agility

Education

Computer Science/Information Systems/Mathematics/Engineering degree

Tools

Jenkins

Bitbucket pipelines

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

Grafana

ELK Stack

DataDog

Git

GitHub

GitLab

Jira

Confluence

Job description

MAIN PURPOSE:

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.
• Champion infrastructure as code (IaC) practices using Terraform, 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.
• Automate manual operational tasks
• 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
• Code quality: Test coverage, bug rate, code review compliance
• 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

• Languages: JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, Python, Java, Go, Swift, Kotlin
• 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)
• CI/CD: Jenkins, Bitbucket pipelines
• IaC: Terraform
• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm
• Monitoring: Grafana, ELK Stack, DataDog
• Version Control: Git, GitHub, GitLab
• Agile Tools: Jira, Confluence

MINIMUM QUALIFICATION

• Computer Science/Information Systems/Mathematics/Engineering degree
• AWS/Azure certifications

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

• 10+ years of software development experience, including at least 3–5 years in DevOps
• 3 - 5 years technical leadership/management experienceDeep 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:
• CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins, BitBucket pipelines)
• Containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Infrastructure-as-Code tools (e.g., Terraform)
• 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.