WFS Senior Manager Development and DevOps

Woolworths Financial Services; Cape Town; Hybrid; ZAR 900 000 - 1 200 000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent financial services company based in Cape Town is seeking a Senior Manager for Development and DevOps. This leadership role involves overseeing the software development lifecycle and driving strategy and execution of DevOps practices. Candidates must have at least 10 years of experience in software development, including significant leadership experience in DevOps, and be skilled in cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. The position operates under a hybrid work structure, emphasizing agile methodologies and team collaboration.

Benefits

Hybrid work model

Leadership development opportunities

Commitment to transformation and equity

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience, including at least 3–5 years in DevOps.
• Experience in leading Native Mobile application development (iOS, Android, Hybrid).
• Deep understanding of software architecture patterns.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the Development and DevOps vision and strategy.
• Manage full software development lifecycle including design, development, and release.
• Oversee engineering quality assurance to ensure coding standards.

Skills

Technical Leadership

People Management

Strategic Thinking

Collaboration

Problem Solving

Resilience & Agility

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant field

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Terraform

Jenkins

Docker

Kubernetes

Grafana

Job description

Woolworths Financial Services | Full time

WFS Senior Manager Development and DevOps

Cape Town, South Africa | Posted on 08/07/2025

Woolworths Financial Services, or WFS as it is better known, is a Joint Venture with Absa Bank, that supports the Woolworths retail business by providing in-store credit in the form of the Woolworths StoreCard and offering value-added services including credit cards, personal loans and short-term insurance as well as life insurance linked to other products.

Job Description

Woolworths Financial Services follows a Work-in-Hybrid work structure which requires employees to work from home for the majority of their time with some rotation into office.

MAIN PURPOSE

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

Requirements

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 platform 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)

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.