Senior Specialist: Product Development

Absa Bank Limited; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 200 000 - 300 000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial institution in Johannesburg is seeking a Product Manager to define and deliver innovative product solutions across Value-Added Services and Domestic Payments. This role involves leading product strategy and development, managing stakeholder relationships, and ensuring compliance with regulations. The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor's degree and demonstrated experience in product innovation and risk management, with a strong focus on performance optimization.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in leading product development and innovation.
• Ability to manage stakeholder expectations and communications.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead the product development lifecycle from ideation to market.
• Maintain relationships with stakeholders and industry partners.
• Drive optimization of product performance through data analysis.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory and legal requirements.

Skills

Product strategy development

Stakeholder management

Risk management

Data analysis

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business, Commerce, or Management Studies

Job description

Overview

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.

Job Summary

To define, lead, and embed best‑practice product development across Value‑Added Services and Domestic Payments by providing strategic guidance, specialist expertise, and continuous improvement tactics that enable the delivery of innovative, compliant, and commercially impactful products.

Job Description

1. Product Strategy & Innovation
   • Build and maintain a prioritised product innovation pipeline aligned to customer needs, commercial potential, and regulatory trends
   • Translate insights into clear problem statements, hypotheses, and product opportunities, ensuring alignment to strategic objectives
2. Product Development & Change Delivery
   • Lead the end‑to‑end product development lifecycle, from discovery and business case development to design, build, testing, and go‑to‑market
   • Plan and manage ongoing product enhancements, investments, and feature changes, ensuring timely delivery and cross‑functional readiness
   • Partner closely with the Change team, Technology Design, Operations, Legal, Compliance, and Finance to deliver high‑quality, scalable solutions
3. Stakeholder & Partner Management (unchanged)
   • Build and maintain strong internal and external stakeholder relationships across the bank, industry bodies, regulators, and ecosystem partners
   • Ensure proactive communication of product direction, risks, timelines, and changes to all relevant forums
   • Represent the product domain in internal governance structures and external working groups within the payments and VAS ecosystem
4. Product Performance Management
   • Use data and insights to drive continuous optimisation of product performance, pricing, and operational efficiency
   • Identify underperforming areas and initiate corrective action or product lifecycle decisions (enhance, retire, consolidate)
5. Risk, Compliance & Control Management
   • Ensure all products comply with regulatory, legal, compliance, and risk management requirements relevant to VAS and domestic payments
   • Provide clear guidance to teams on compliance implications and ensure that control design, MCA/RCSA evidence, and audit outcomes are embedded in product processes
   • Proactively identify and manage product risks, ensuring timely remediation and issue closure

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Business, Commerce and Management Studies (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, 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