Manager: Platforms

Role purpose:
Platform Engineering is a technically strong individual who takes overall responsibility for leading the agile solution design, deployment and ongoing optimization and evolution of high-complexity enterprise-wide technology platforms & infrastructure delivery and operations.

Due to the wide set of platforms and technologies involved in building and running them, the incumbent needs to be familiar with and have extensive experience in all aspects of data centre and infrastructure management, storage, data protection (backups, ransomware), physical hardware, networking as well as virtual (VMware) and container platform technologies as a service.

TPlatform Engineering is accountable for ensuring all relevant Vodafone and Vodacom-mandated compliance and audit-related activities are executed and reviewed to ensure continued compliance at all times. This includes owning local SA IT policies and the cyber security baseline evidence and outcomes for all platforms and related IT capabilities in this area.

This role also embraces the concepts of Self-Service platforms, AIOPS, Observability, CICD/IaC and DevSecOps practices and is expected to create and enhance platforms and related services that leverage these concepts extensively to support and enable the consumers of these technology platforms to do the same.

Your responsibilities will include:
Platform Direction Setting, Solution Design & Performance Management

Positively contribute to the organization-wide platform & engineering strategy & the achievement of ended Platforms as a Service

Set the supported technical platform vision and direction for the Vodacom SA IT, aligned to Vodafone strategies and guidelines.

Influence Vodafone policies, standards and guidelines as need be to ensure it caters for the local SA IT market context.

Cascade the platform vision, direction & strategy across all teams & facilitate stakeholder alignment.

Lead & facilitate the design of the integrated set of platform solution blueprints & coach teams on the strategic direction, vision, platform development, architecture & infrastructure holistically

Act as the point of escalation for all major issues and events and apply deep subject matter expertise to facilitate their resolution with minimal business & customer impact. Ensure incidents on platforms are dealt with according to internal Vodacom and ITIL best practices wrt major incident management, root cause analysis, service improvement plans etc.

Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of platforms (all applications) ensuring ongoing optimization & cost to value for our businesses.

Take full accountability for the end-to-end platform quality, completeness and resulting user experience for the life of the platform or service.

Assess platform capabilities and drive development plans for exceptional delivery & evolution of the platform.

Lead the design, implementation & adoption of enhanced process or technology solutions that identify and resolve platform, system, deployment, and environmental issues.

Ensure that the necessary SOX and PCI compliance activities are addressed and completed on time as agreed with the relevant governing bodies within Vodacom (always).

Ensure continued compliance with relevant Vodafone and /or local Market security policy requirements (always).

Take full accountability for and lead the design & continuous improvement of an integrated platform-specific cost model & the ongoing optimization of platform efficiencies and effectiveness

Manage and grow a high-performance 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.) supported by the Vodacom Grow framework.

Leverage coaching techniques to drive a higher quality design and deployment of technical products and services across technology teams

The ideal candidate for this role will have:
Technical / professional qualifications:
Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Programming, or other related field is essential

8+ years of managing diverse teams and vendors within the IT technology space.

10+ years of experience in the IT infrastructure management and operations space.

3+ years of relevant experience in large-scale Infrastructure delivery and operations automation

Experience working in cloud-native environments.

Experience working in a large agile environment, with multiple teams.

Professional experience and knowledge of the telecommunications industry are preferred.

Core competencies, knowledge, and experience:
Ability to build E2E technology roadmaps and capability plans specific to IT platforms.

Experience building technical specifications for platforms and in turn agile features, and service models, in conjunction with IT (consumer) technology teams

Experience & proven track record in platform optimization and overall cost/value management (finance, consumption etc.)

Virtualization and infrastructure technologies, e.g. Windows, Linux, VMWare, Xen, KVM, Docker, OpenShift

Storage and Data Protection technologies, e.g. DELL Storage arrays (Unity, PowerMax, Powerstore, Isilon, ECS, Data Domain), DPS Suite including Networker, Connectrix (Cisco&Brocade) SAN switches

Infrastructure automation and configuration management tools, e.g. Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt

Software and hardware vendor solution evaluation and negotiation

Ability to analyse and interpret complex problems or processes, identify and understand requirements, and develop solutions

Closing date for Applications: 9 June 2023
The base location for this role is, Techno Centre, Cape Town.
The Companys approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.

Vodacom is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates and values diversity & inclusion.