Head of IT Operations at Sanlam Group

What will you do?

• Maximise IT service delivery to strengthen the relationship between the IT department and its customers and effectively handle and resolve user complaints
• Ensure that technology and solutions which support our business have minimal service interruptions
• The role includes day-to-day support, compliance, SLA management, maintenance, lifecycle management and planning of the production business applications used within their service area and ensuring the IT operations strategy is in alignment with the overall IT and business direction
• Perform the role of the Service level manager by ensuring SLA’s are setup for all IT services rendered by internal teams, external teams and third party vendors.
• Perform the role of Incident and Problem Manager by facilitating the incident process end to end. Actively driving a strong root cause culture
• Own and drive the Change Advisory Board
• Reduce IT risks by ensuring good IT Governance, mitigate risks and implement best practices in IT such as ITIL, PMBOK
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement across services delivered and implement IT policies and procedures to ensure the team operates effectively and aligns to best practices
• Create and maintain strategic partnerships with vendors where necessary to support the IT strategy
• Accountable for forecasting of costs and management of IT financials and identifying innovative ways to reduce cost by streamlining processes and systems
• Accountable for the IT Applications Support team and the IT Maintenance & Support Development teams. Lead the technology teams in day-to-day operations, provide key expertise, supervise support teams, and set performance goals. This includes recruitment and ensuring that knowledge transfer, succession management and team development occurs. Provide technical expertise if required.
• Develop and maintain effective stakeholder relationships at all appropriate levels across the organisation. Communicate proactively and clearly with the key stakeholders to ensure effective, timely understanding and reporting of relevant information
• Identify and drive technological improvements that enhance business outcomes for our internal and external customers

What will make you successful in this role?

• Ability to work in a high pace environment
• Excellent leadership and management skills showcasing a coaching and mentoring style
• Active listening skills
• Solid interest and aptitude for and experience with critical, complicated analytical work and creative thinking
• Your excellent working knowledge of IT processes and infrastructure
• Ability to tackle the unknown
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, coupled with the ability to negotiate and influence at all levels
• The ability to build collaborative relationship with good interpersonal skills and the ability to relate well to colleagues with differing levels of expertise and skills
• Strong project management skills
• Your ability to remain calm in stressful situations
• Knowledge of investments and trading systems
• Solid process optimisation skills
• Problem-solving aptitude, ability to foster innovation and a common sense approach to problem solving
• Experience of the Software Delivery Lifecycle and a good understanding of IT technical solutions
• Hands on approach where required

How will your performance be measured?
Your delivery will be assessed against the following four domains through which we drive all Sanlam Private Wealth Technology:

Being Business Led;
How well have we delivered and supported change in our business that supports our strategic direction
Leading our people:
How well have we grown and protected our people and built a culture around our core cultural enabler of winning together
Stabilization:
How well have we introduced change that improves our stability as an IT organisation and significantly improves our ability to respond to any problem
Innovation:
What have you done that brings an innovative way of thinking about people, technology and process and implementing innovative change through whatever mechanism is available
Qualification and Experience:

• Relevant IT qualification
• Minimum 8 years’ experience in an IT Operations environment within financial services
• IT change management experience essential
• Experience in a financial services environment essential
• ITIL essential

Personal Qualities:

• High Client orientation
• Results orientated
• Ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Planning and organizing skills
• Ability to deal with conflict
• Excellent team orientation
• Business acumen
• Ability to multi-task
• Team player who is self-aware
• Strong organisation skills
• Self-starter with initiative