Head Technology: Risk and Treasury - Randburg at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

Lead the Group Risk & Group Treasury Technology tribe which is a dedicated professional team that supports the wider Group Risk and Treasury domains within Absa Group Limited. These domains covers number of areas including : 

• Interest Rate Risk Management 
• Funding and Liquidity Management 
• Funds Transfer Pricing 
• Capital Management 
• Economic Capital & Stress Testing 
• Operational Risk and other Risk Types 

Risk Analytics & Platforms 

• The role is accountable for the technology solutions and support across these areas which spans a number of key stakeholders including executive decision making and regulatory submissions. It also covers all project and change initiatives within the broader risk and treasury landscape.

Key Responsibilities of role: 

• Define and implement multi-year Risk and Treasury Technology strategic roadmap 
• Drive the implementation of an integrated risk and treasury landscape 
• Understand and influence business strategy 
• Influence and align to organizations strategic architecture 
• Multi-discipline team management and thought leadership 
• Building and strengthening key partnerships with executives and key stakeholders 
• Managing risk and implementation of strategic project deliverables 
• Financial cost management to generate value, understand total cost of ownership and drive efficiencies

Job Description

• The role will require driving an integrated view across risk and treasury including the delivery and implementation of the technology roadmap aligned to the strategic roadmap of the organization. The role plays a leading role in creating a trusted partnership with all relevant business stakeholders and giving them guidance and recommendation on the best possible technology solutions within your domain. A good grounding in risk and treasury functions will facilitate delivering the best possible outcome for the business area. 
• You will also play a leading role in fostering cross functional partnerships across the enterprise to drive an integrated and collaborative area including influencing and guiding strategic architecture. 
• A key part of the role will be driving and delivering change programs within the risk and treasury and making sure that these programs deliver on their deliverables including regulatory commitments and outcomes. The impact and mitigation on the business as usual environment is a key component and critical to the success of the role.  

Product & Service Direction Setting, Solution Design & Performance Management

• Work with the CIO & business product owners to define the product & technical strategy (Full Stack – End to End)
• Act as the single point of partnership & assume responsibility for managing the senior business interface (product owner) relationship
• Assume one stop shop accountability for the delivery of the product & solutions (risk cannot be outsourced to vendors)
• Apply design thinking practices to deliver architecturally sound technical product & service solutions (and explain / guide / coach others on this architecture holistically and technically)
• Lead & facilitate the design of the product & or service solution blueprints aligned to the organization strategy (Short, Medium & Long Term)
• Collaborate across the tech value chain (CSO, CTO, etc.) to guide the business on the appropriate technical solution (cost to value) & the range of strategic technical choices to be made
• Lead the detailed scoping, prioritization & integration planning for the design & deployment of products & services with & across multiple stakeholder groups (Front End, Back End & Integration) – (aligned to solution blueprints)
• Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design & direction of the Group Architecture standards, principles, preferences & practices. Short term deployment must align to strategic long term delivery.
• Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design and direction of the Group Infrastructure standards and practices e.g. OLA’s, IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, Containerization etc.
• Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of products and services (all applications) – ensuring ongoing optimization & cost to value for our businesses (think bank wide)

DevOps (with deep knowledge & understanding of context within which we develop architecturally including infrastructure)

• Leverage the required expert level (own) skill & knowledge in architecture & Infrastructure, design and manage all development & development practices & outputs across squads (apply knowledge on virtualization, containerization, automation, storage & serverless technologies (e.g. AWS, Azure, Google, & on prem-Cloud, etc.)
• Ensure the most optimal design & deployment of technical products and services in the organization (via pipeline – not manually)
• Design & Implement Automation Testing, Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery Strategies & frameworks across squads for effective solution development & deployment (understand and apply expert knowledge in e.g. Kubernetes, Jenkins, TeamCity, Arifactory, MS Powershell, Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) Tools, APM Tools (e.g. NewRelic & Splunk) etc.
• Ensure solution designs deliver on the key technical principles of: self-service, repeatability, testability, scalability & resilience
• Guide code development practices and processes through an understanding of complex concepts and developmental practices such as threading, parallel processing, asynchronous programming, domain driven design, lambdas etc. & coding language expertise (e.g. Java, C++, Groovy, Python, Bash, Perl, Ruby etc.)
• Guide & ensure the delivery of quality development (code) based on own experience in developing across a range of applications including but not limited to: server side, client side, web (SOAP, REST, JSON), socket based programming, batch & real time, building architectural patterns, security / security domains)
• Effectively manage the DevOps pipeline & associated releases for maximum customer impact & minimum business risk
• Manage the maintenance & optimization of applications, products & services as a ‘way of doing things / culture’ within the development teams. You are fully accountable for the longevity of applications aligned to Group Architectural practices.
• Coach & Mentor senior developers across squads on the technical competencies to effectively deliver on DevOps solutions (see Dev competency model in skills & competencies section). To do this, display proficiency in the Senior level competency requirements.

Delivery Management (where there is a specific product / service you manage)

• With fluency in the deployment of agile methodologies, resource & manage the appropriate number and nature (skill & capability) of squad based teams to execute on both Run & Change elements of delivery
• Work in collaboration with transformation & change teams for effective resourcing and delivery management of various programmes at all levels (SI, BU etc.)
• Ensure agile practices are implemented and sustained for effective delivery to business e.g. RETRO’s etc.
• Positively & proactively manage product owner relationships including building product owner technical capability to enable balanced & best fit decision making
• Proactively engage with & partner CTO, CSO, SE, Risk and broader enablement functions to drive alignment & leading practice in technology design & deployment

People

• Proactively attract, recruit, develop, retain, reward & deploy a diverse resource base aligned to an ever evolving tech environment (ahead of demand)
• Build a high performance team environment through self-directed teams by driving performance management & measurement that is aligned with agile working practices (including daily, weekly, etc. sprint routines, regular & honest feedback etc.)
• Accountable for the right people in the right teams to deliver on our tech strategy (always!)
• Leverage coaching techniques in all squad related activity to drive a higher quality design and deployment of technical products and services
• ​Financial & Vendor Management, Risk & Governance
• Carry the ‘one stop shop’ accountability for all risk associated with technical decision making (from ideation to deployment)
• Manage & Apply the organization risk & governance frameworks
• Ensure decisions on infrastructure & product design are aligned to chapter & guild guidelines & are sustainable for the enterprise
• Proactively involve / engage chapter & guild leads in product design & infrastructure decision making, applying an enterprise wide lens to product & service development
• Manage all vendor selection processes & take full accountability for all related commercial impact
• Negotiate best fit contracts for the organization at an enterprise level and align decision making to our key business principles of scalability, resilience, captivity etc.
• Deliver on time & on budget (always)

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology