Lead Operations (Flight and Airport) Applications at South African Airways (SAA)

Job Purpose

The role is responsible for managing the business application services used by the airline Operations (Flight and Airports) division, either directly or through vendor services and resources. The Lead Operations Applications is responsible for the efficient and effective functioning of all IT Operations Systems and Applications world-wide. The role is responsible for managing overall IT day to day system operations to improve business value from system utilisation, vendor and service level management, outsourced application management services, vendor and system costs, system risk and health, system enhancements and development, performance and end user satisfaction. The scope of the system services includes all systems supporting flight operations business functions such as flight planning, crew planning and rostering, crew recency and training, flight departure systems, electronic flight bag applications, fuel management, load management, flight turnaround management systems, disruption management, reservation and ticketing and airport systems. Provide lead support to key strategic initiatives by leading the system support processes, innovation process on existing systems and applications. Interpret business strategy and determine innovative solutions supporting strategy implementation. Manage a highly skilled vendor team of technology drivers including service providers and suppliers. Interact with key business users to identify innovative opportunities for improving technology platforms that provide the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness.

Principal Accountabilities

• Provide input to the design of the Department Strategy and implement strategy within area/s of responsibility
• Recommends and standardises policies, processes and systems to support implementation of the strategy
• Drive profitability in area of responsibility and overall department
• Manage and control budget in area of responsibility and contribute to department budget management
• Provide recommendations to actively support cost and headcount containment
• Ensure vendor optimisation, value optimisation and cost efficiency within area of control
• Establishing appropriate and effective service delivery models
• Identify information technology initiatives in alignment with business requirements and strategic objectives and plan budget accordingly
• Enhance and further develop the corporate intranet solution into a more sociable and collaborative environment driven by clear user needs and adheres to the digital by default service standards
• Develop and customise intranet-based solutions with social tools that will help to organise, structure, find and re-use content with an easy to use web interface across web and mobile devices
• Develop custom features leveraging on available open source modules for social networking, feeds and aggregation and enterprise grade search engine
• Develop front end features that are responsive, accessible, highly usable and with interactive features that engage users and help staff to find reasons to use the intranet
• Develop functional and technical specification documentation
• Advise on best practice in web development, integrations and content management frameworks especially geared towards a corporate intranet
• Provide guidance and on the job technical handover to technical users and developers
• Work to tight deadlines managing time efficiently
• Record and report progress accurately during the update project, escalating any issues as appropriate
• Conduct testing of changes, this may include technical, accessibility, usability and user acceptance testing
• Ensure that all online applications meet required usability and accessibility guidelines
• Assist in the evaluation of solutions and implement chosen products/systems
• Research, identify good practice and share knowledge of tools and techniques with the wider Digital team both developers and non-developers
• Work with business partners to implement new enhancements from the analysis to implementation phases, while ensuring that thorough testing occurs
• Support business objectives and ensure alignment with existing and new solutions
• Partner with Business stakeholders to define business and systems requirements for new technology deployments
• Create test plans / cases for enhancements, and coordinate and conduct user acceptance testing
• Perform direct research on potential technology solutions in support of software procurement efforts
• Respond to Customer Service Requests/Minor Enhancements as required
• Partner with Project Management Office (PMO) Team and Business Relationship Manager (BRM) to serve as technical lead over business-critical projects
• Act as liaison between the Customer and Third-Party Vendors to support and enhance systems
• Provide Operational support for existing solutions
• Receive Incidents relating to system issues and outages
• Troubleshoot, interpret logs, document steps to reproduce software bugs, process problems or other issues which create application errors
• Produce timely incident reports documenting system downtime
• Support identification of Root Cause Analysis
• Monitor systems for issues such as quality, accessibility and work with departments to resolve
• Develop and maintain technical and operational procedure and work instruction documentation
• Provide on-call support as needed
• Benchmarking, analysing, and making recommendations with supporting data for the improvement and growth of the environment
• Ensuring application documentation and portfolio are comprehensive and kept up to date
• Negotiate service level agreements with IT service suppliers
• Monitor and mitigate all business risk activities (including business continuity and operational risk management taking place in the operational environment (both within the tecnological environment and other operational divisions, as appropriate) in line with industry regulations and legislation
• Ensure that required systems for support of organisational activities are implemented and aligned 

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Information Systems or related field at NQF 7 and/or 7 - 10 years’ experience in IT Systems and Applications Management of which 5 years’ is at management level
• 3 years’ experience in applications support functions
• Proven track record of the ability to initiate, plan and execute technical projects
• Knowledge of latest global technology capabilities and trends across applications and platforms
• ITIL Certification would be an advantage
• Airline applications management experience is preferable
• 3 years’ Vendor Management and Service Level Management experience

Knowledge and Skills

• Contract negotiations and management
• Service delivery
• IT System Development
• IT System Health Management
• IT Application Support
• IT Data Centre infrastructure
• IT Security
• ITIL Service, problem, incident, configuration management
• SLA and contract conformance and governance
• Design, implement ITS policy, procedures and standards
• Budgeting and control
• IT Global operations
• Problem and Change management
• Commercial analysis
• Business integration strategy and design
• License management, policy and governance
• Vendor in and outsource management
• Airline Flight Operations
• Resource management skills
• ITIL
• Cloud Practices
• DevOPS
• Application and data security
• Airline global operations management experience
• Business continuity skills
• IT auditing and conformance management skills
• Financial skills
• Stakeholder management
• Negotiation skills
• Analytical skills
• Communication skills
• Information processing
• Commercial acumen
• Interpersonal skills
• Attributes
• Leads with courage
• Leads high performance teams
• Coaches and mentors
• Leads transformation and change
• Drives innovation
• Visionary and inspirational leader
• Cultural and inclusive leader
• Judgement and decision making
• Setting measurement targets and ensuring performance against these, holding staff responsible and developing staff where gaps are identified

Additional Information

SAA is using an online recruitment tool.  Applicants are required to complete an individual registration profile capturing essential personal and career selection criteria.  Applicants must please note that they only need to complete the online registration once and thereafter they can update their online profiles as and when necessary. 

PLEASE NOTE: The onus are on applicants to ensure all mandatory fields are completed.  Incomplete online profiles will be disqualified from the application process.  Online profiles are used for screening and shortlisting purposes.   A CV is only for verification and record keeping purposes.  Applicants need to ensure that their online profiles are completed with correct and current information.  Incomplete sections can disqualify applicants from the screening and selection process. 

This applies to all internal and external applicants.