O&M Team Lead Senior Manager | Equity Bank Kenya Jobs

Operations & Maintenance Team Lead (Senior Manager)

Role Overview

This role carries end-to-end accountability for stability, availability, and security of a core platform and its integrations across a regional footprint. You will lead a transformation from reactive operations to automated, code-driven reliability, own the OPEX budget, enforce operational readiness standards for deployments, and build a Technical Operations Center of Excellence that standardises practices across subsidiaries.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Operations & Reliability Excellence
– Establish the strategic vision and operating framework for the “1-5-10” mandate as a core KPI with implementation targets by Q4 2026
– Define success metrics, monitoring frameworks, and reporting mechanisms; ensure detection, investigation, and remediation targets are executed
– Provide hands-on leadership during critical incidents with high business impact or complexity
– Drive SRE and automation transformation from manual operations to proactive, code-driven practices
– Champion self-healing infrastructure and intelligent automation; set technical direction and prioritise initiatives
– Allocate OPEX strategically and approve high-impact automation solutions before production deployment
– Maintain ultimate accountability for availability, performance, and security across the core platform and integrations
– Balance change velocity with platform stability; set platform-wide observability standards and step into critical technical decisions

Service Management & Governance
– Define strategic approach for Incident, Problem, Change, and technical debt elimination; establish SLA/OLA frameworks
– Review major incident trends and drive strategic interventions; enforce blameless post-mortem culture
– Own operational readiness framework: acceptance criteria, certification standards, and go-live processes
– Provide final approval for high-risk deployments; enforce validation standards and delivery accountability for operability
– Provide senior change advisory and final approval for changes with enterprise-level risk and cross-platform impact
– Coordinate change planning with peer leaders to avoid conflicts; set change policies and approve change windows
– Review and approve RCAs for failed changes and major change-related incidents

Stakeholder, Compliance, Vendor & Financial Leadership
– Brief stakeholders on platform health, risk, and operational performance; represent Technical Operations in executive forums
– Establish standards for asset inventory and lifecycle management; oversee refresh/upgrade planning
– Own compliance strategy and audit relationships; ensure adherence to regulations, data residency laws, and security standards
– Define BC/DR strategy and oversee testing; approve RTO/RPO frameworks for critical services
– Own strategic vendor relationships; conduct service reviews and drive performance improvements and value optimisation
– Define partner management strategy; review partner performance and support resolution of high-impact partner issues
– Develop, manage, and optimise the Technical Operations OPEX budget; lead annual planning and monthly variance reporting
– Identify cost optimisation through automation, efficiency, and vendor rationalisation while protecting service quality

Center of Excellence & People Leadership
– Build and lead the Technical Operations CoE: standardise procedures, tooling, monitoring, and runbooks across subsidiaries
– Establish operational readiness frameworks for new subsidiary launches; enable knowledge sharing across geographies
– Maintain strong build-to-run collaboration with delivery/configuration leadership; define operating model, RACI, and accountability
– Lead and mentor direct report managers; set KPIs, run performance reviews, and manage succession planning
– Drive talent strategy: recruitment, retention, development, and career pathways aligned to organisational culture
– Sponsor continuous improvement and innovation initiatives; support proof-of-concepts for emerging technologies

Qualifications

Experience Requirements
– 8–10 years’ progressive experience in technical operations, production support, or SRE, with 3–5 years in leadership roles in 24/7 environments
– 5–7 years operating financial services platforms (core banking, payments, mobile money) in regulated contexts with high availability demands
– Demonstrated multi-country or multi-site operations management experience (including project-based regional exposure)
– Track record delivering automation, process standardisation, SRE adoption, or service management implementation while maintaining service delivery
– Strong vendor/integration partner management experience, including multi-party incident coordination and escalations
– Proven cross-functional leadership across delivery, infrastructure, security, and business units
– Budget ownership experience including planning, tracking, optimisation, and participation in commercial discussions
– Extensive crisis/major incident leadership experience with stakeholder communication and post-incident improvement execution

Academic & Certification
– University degree in Information Technology, Electrical Engineering, or related field
– Relevant certifications (ITIL Foundation or higher; AWS/Azure/GCP) are advantageous

How to Apply

Apply online via: Equity Bank Kenya on equitybank.taleo.net