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
Lead the agile solution design, deployment & ongoing optimization & evolution of enterprise wide technology products and services (full stack engineering & ownership / control) in high complexity environments.Job Description
Position Title
Lead Technology Partner: Business Banking Debt Management
Job Details
- Role: Lead Technology Partner
- Grade: VP
- Business Area: Absa Business Banking: Technology
- Reporting To: Executive Information Technology BB Risk
- Team Leadership: Capable of leading multi skilled technology teams including Developers, Solution Analysts, Scrum Masters to achieve both Operational and strategic goals for Absa Business Banking.
Role Purpose
The Lead Technology Partner for Collections & Recoveries is accountable for executing the technology strategy, architecture, delivery roadmap, operational stability, and modernization agenda for Business Banking Risk technology platforms.
The role acts as the primary technology partner for Business Banking Risk Debt Management on behalf of the Executive Information Technology BB Risk, supporting Senior Stakeholder management and reporting for the Debt Management area.
The LTP ensures that technology complies with Change, Technology and Regulatory Compliance and meets set objectives of Operational Stability, Tech and Cyber Security Risks and enables and supports business strategic objectives through Transformation and Change programs. The role supports the enrichment of data sources and the enablement of AI both in workforce augmentation and the development of AI Models.
"Own the modernization and replacement strategies for the business unit including platform consolidation, API enablement, customer journey digitization, leveraging AI in both AI Model development and workforce augmentation on the back of the data-driven strategies."
Key Responsibilities
1. Business & Technology Strategy
- Provide technology insights and opportunities to partner with and enrich business strategies through technology both from a strategic (3 year) roadmap and immediate gains perspective.
- Ensure that Technology investments aligns with business strategy for the Business Banking unit.
- Develop modernization strategies for legacy platforms.
- Drive platform rationalization and simplification initiatives.
- Adhere to Architecture principles in all solutions such as principles of reuse and target-state architecture aligned with Absa Group standards.
2. Architecture & Platform Ownership
- Collaborate with Architecture teams to ensure optimal technology solutions in line with Absa Group Strategy.
- Ensure that we support a data driven strategy
- Ensure teams support the leveraging of AI where appropriate and align with AI Responsible Use Standards
3. Delivery Leadership
- Lead multi-disciplinary technology squads, with a strong record of Technology delivery at every level and with a broad base of knowledge.
- Experience in execution of development on JAVA, #C etc., Solution Design, Architecture experience and Technology Team Leadership evidenced through success project delivery.
- Provide Impact Assessments and Quotes for projects and initiatives through team engagements providing as accurate as possible Govern business cases, BRDs, architecture, testing, and production deployments.
- Ensure delivery through SAFe and agile practices.
- Manage multiple external and internal dependencies across integration, business analysts, suppliers, stakeholders to support the resolution of blockers and risks to successful delivery
- Technology Ownership of applicable Services from inception to decommissioning
- Manage team/service budgets, suppliers and delivery partners.
- Provide executive-level reporting.
- Accountability to deliver technology solutions on time and in budget.
4. Operational Leadership
Accountable for:
- Service stability
- Platform resilience
- Disaster recovery compliance
- Technical debt remediation
- Incident management
- Risk remediation
- Cyber and security compliance
The LTP remains accountable as application owner for business-critical services. The role is identified in technology standards as responsible for risk management, uptime, and maintenance of applications.
5. Data & Analytics Leadership
- Drive data and analytics capability enablement.
- Support optimization of business process through analytics
- Enable MI and operational reporting.
- Champion AI and predictive opportunities
- Improve visibility of customer journeys and key performance metrics.
6. Stakeholder Management
Manage senior relationships with:
- Heads of Business Units such as Collections and Recoveries
- Product Owners
- Business Operations
- Risk including Tech, Operations and Cyber Security Risk
- Compliance
- Architecture
- Enterprise Integration
- Vendors / Suppliers
- Technology leadership forums
7. People Leadership
Lead:
- Product Engineers
- Salesforce Engineers
- Solution Analysts
- QA Teams
- Data Engineers
- Scrum Masters
- Operations Support Teams
- Business Analysts (Indirectly)
Critical Success Measures (KPIs)
Delivery
- Alignment with Architecture principles and Strategy
- Budget adherence
- Successful program delivery within time and budget tolerance %
Service
- Availability >99.9%
- Reduction in incidents and impact to business stakeholders
- DR and resilience compliance
Modernization
- Legacy platform decommission milestones achieved
- API adoption targets met
- Reduction in technical debt
Business Outcomes
- Achieved business objectives per initiatives
- Optimized system processes
- Faster customer turnaround times
- Reduced operational, Tech and Cyber risk
People
- Employee Engagement Targets
- Succession Planning
- Talent Retention
- Mandatory Learning Compliance
Preferred Experience
Essential
- 10+ years technology leadership experience
- Financial services experience
- Technology delivery leadership experience
- Large-scale transformation experience
Highly Desirable
- Collections systems
- Recoveries platforms
- Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
- CustomerOne
- API-led architecture
- SAFe leadership
- Data and analytics platforms
- Cloud transformation programs
Competencies
- Strategic Leadership
- Business Partnership
- Commercial Acumen
- Technology Architecture
- Technical skills appropriate to team (Salesforce, Java etc.)
- Agile / SAFe Leadership
- Financial Acumen
- Proactive Risk Management
- Change Leadership
- Vendor Management, including Supplier contracting and negotiations
- Executive Communication
Recommended Addition for the Current Role
Based on the current Collections transformation focus, I would add a specific accountability:
Education
Bachelor's Degree: Information TechnologyAbsa 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
Skills Required
- 10+ years of technology leadership experience
- Financial services experience
- Technology delivery leadership experience
- Large-scale transformation experience
- Bachelor's degree in Information Technology
- Experience with collections systems
- Experience with recoveries platforms
- Salesforce Financial Services Cloud experience
- CustomerOne experience
- API-led architecture experience
- SAFe leadership experience
- Data and analytics platform experience
- Cloud transformation program experience
- Technical skills appropriate to the team, including Salesforce and Java
- Agile and SAFe leadership
- Vendor management, supplier contracting, and negotiations
Absa Group Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Absa Group and has not been reviewed or approved by Absa Group.
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Healthcare Strength — Medical aid, group life, disability, and funeral cover are described as comprehensive, with features such as terminal‑illness advances and beneficiary grocery benefits. Wellness and assistance offerings support overall financial and personal wellbeing.
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Retirement Support — A pension fund and group retirement arrangements are positioned as core benefits within fixed remuneration. Retirement coverage is embedded alongside other protections as part of standard employment.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Employee share‑ownership (eKhaya) and equity‑linked awards broaden wealth‑sharing, with dividends or cash‑equivalent participation in some markets. This provides longer‑term value beyond base pay.
Absa Group Insights
What We Do
Absa Group Limited (Absa) has forged a new way of getting things done, driven by bravery and passion, with the readiness to realise growth on the African continent and beyond. We’re a truly African brand, inspired by the people we serve in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. We also have representative offices in China, Namibia, Nigeria and the United States, as well as securities entities in the United Kingdom and the United States, along with technology support colleagues in the Czech Republic.
