Job Description

ENVIRONMENT:A highly strategic & forward-thinking Head of Infrastructure is sought by a leading FinTech company, committed to propelling the nation's digital economy forward. You will lead a team of 50 Engineers and Analysts, located in both Cape Town and Joburg and be responsible for the Production Service (infrastructure and application), ensuring an industry leading service is provided to issuing and acquiring clients with zero transaction declines, resiliency, and availability at the heart of your strategy. You will be part of the Group Technology Infrastructure management team who, in addition to South Africa, are present in the UAE, Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, North Africa, West Africa and East Africa. The successful incumbent will require a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering or Computer Science or related experience including having worked in a financial/financial payment technology organization & leading Infrastructure teams of approx. 50 people with proficiency in AWS, Citrix, VMware, M365, Teams, SharePoint, AD.DUTIES:Leadership -

• Recruit, mentor, and motivate high-performing teams.
• Promote talent development.
• Maintain culture of operational excellence and technology innovation.

Strategy and Roadmap -

• Develop infrastructure strategy and technology roadmaps aligned to business goals.
• Architect next-generation infrastructure to enable new products and services.

Operations and Availability -

• Ensure infrastructure services meet their Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Maintain highest levels of infrastructure uptime and performance.
• Lead incident, problem, change and capacity management.

Governance and Compliance -

• Manage access controls, security protections, business continuity planning.
• Manage audits, risk assessments, and ensure regulatory compliance.
• Infrastructure vulnerability management (CVE patching and security configuration).

Financial Management -

• Own infrastructure budgets, optimize spending and contain costs.

Vendor and Contract Management -

• Architect and source effective supplier solutions.
• Negotiate contracts ensuring optimal value and service quality.

Stakeholder Engagement -

• Consult Technology teams and senior business leadership on infrastructure direction.
• Build relationships with key clients and external service providers.
• Manage incidents and lead communication with senior technology and business leaders.

REQUIREMENTS:Qualifications -

• Bachelor's Degree in Engineering or Computer Science or related experience.

Experience/Skills -

• Experience of working in a financial/financial payment technology organization.
• Leading Infrastructure teams of approx. 50 people.
• Experience of working in a matrix managed organization.
• Leading medium to large, complex infrastructure/cloud portfolios and projects and cross-functional technical teams for availability and support of business systems.
• Good experience of Cloud technologies - AWS preferred.
• Good experience of infrastructure technologies across Platform, Storage, Database, Networks, Citrix, Virtualization (VMware).
• Good knowledge of end user technologies - M365, Teams, SharePoint, AD, End User laptop/VDI/desktop.
• With technology infrastructure vision and multi-year infrastructure strategies and roadmaps spanning data center facilities, hardware/software platforms, hosting, networks.
• Experience with managing infrastructure budgets, making build vs buy decisions, controlling operational/capital expenditures and articulating sound cost/benefit justifications.
• Firsthand experience architecting and rolling out next-generation infrastructure leveraging automation, orchestration, cloud platforms and modernizing legacy environments.
• Implementing IT infrastructure processes, procedures, policies, and frameworks compliant to ITIL practices, regulatory controls, and industry standards.
• Working knowledge on security threats, risk assessments, data protection methodologies to implement robust defence-in-depth controls across infrastructure.
• Stakeholder Management interacting with senior leaders in technology and business functions to consult infrastructure direction and jointly align priorities.
• Exposure working in complex global organizations, networked with infrastructure leaders across geographical regions to collaborate on technology transformation initiatives.

Nice to have skills -

• Experience of on-premise cloud solutions such AWS Outpost , Azure stack, OCI@customer.
• Compliance experience (HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC2).

ATTRIBUTES:

• Strong people leadership pedigree with experience hiring and retaining top infrastructure talent, nurturing team culture focused on infrastructure excellence and customer orientation.
• Passion for infrastructure space including deep understanding of major technology domains - data center, hardware, storage, backup, networks, virtualization, cloud platforms.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Excellent analytical and problem management skills.
• Excellent diligence and organizational skills.
• Collaborative and team player.
• Challenges the norm.
• Not afraid of failure but learns from this and moves forward.
• Ability to successfully anticipate issues or challenges without being specifically directed.
• Able to meet targets, deadlines and manage time, and teams time, effectively.

Datafin