Current jobs related to Chief Information Officer: Digital - Sandton, Gauteng - ABSA BANK LIMITED

Empowering Africa's tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

Lead the strategic direction, development, and management of the organisation's digital technology infrastructure. Drive digital transformation by establishing robust, scalable, and secure technology platforms that enable business growth, operational efficiency, and superior customer experiences. Champion innovation and ensure the digital environment supports current and future business needs.

Job Description

KEY FOCUS AREAS

• Define and govern enterprise digital infrastructure strategy, architecture standards, and technology roadmaps for Business Banking
• Establish infrastructure governance frameworks ensuring scalability, resilience, and alignment with business objectives
• Lead strategic technology vendor relationships and platform investment decisions
• Oversee cloud strategy, data center operations, network infrastructure, and disaster recovery capabilities
• Ensure infrastructure security frameworks and compliance with regulatory requirements
• Manage infrastructure budget allocation and performance optimization across the technology estate

ACCOUNTABILITIES

Strategy Formulation and Execution

• Develop and implement the digital infrastructure strategy, ensuring alignment with business goals.
• Identify and prioritise technology investments that drive digital transformation and value creation.
• Lead enterprise-wide digital initiatives, ensuring delivery of key milestones and measurable outcomes.
• Translate long-term strategic objectives into aligned business plans, execution roadmaps and key milestone measurements for the business area.
• Cascade strategic goals and ensure alignment between business unit vision and functional implementation priorities, setting clear short, medium and long-term milestones.
• Develop effective partnerships to enable business performance and contribute to sector-wide influence aligned with strategic initiatives.
• Respond to emerging policy and regulatory trends by adapting operational strategy and ensuring compliance alignment.
• Coordinate business enablement efforts for the Businessl Bank, ensuring delivery capability across systems, processes, and teams.
• Track execution progress against key strategic initiatives and intervene to correct course where needed.
• Support transformation initiatives through structured programme delivery and change management practices.
• Provide expert advice and support in operating model, strategy, and value chain formulation and delivery alignment.
• Identify practices and technologies that provide competitive advantage and enable knowledge sharing and integration of practice areas.
• Undertake analysis of management and specialist information and guide reporting tool implementation to improve decision-making quality.

Customer Primacy

• Leverage digital technology to enhance customer experience and engagement.
• Ensure digital platforms are intuitive, reliable, and responsive to customer needs.
• Interpret market and customer insights to inform operational plans and prioritise capability investments.
• Utilise customer data to improve processes and propositions, ensuring measurable customer value delivery.
• Instill customer-centric decision-making in teams, balancing experience and efficiency targets.
• Implement initiatives that improve customer engagement and retention through operational enhancements.
• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives to deliver consistent customer journeys and service quality.
• Represent the voice of the customer within leadership forums to influence service delivery priorities.
• Plan and deliver services that create a culture which aims to exceed customer expectations in all aspects of the business.
• Provide expertise in designing integrated frameworks to embed service excellence.

Sustainable Growth

• Enable business scalability and growth through robust, future-ready digital infrastructure.
• Support new business models and digital products with agile technology solutions.
• Develop business area growth plans aligned to segment and enterprise priorities.
• Work with business partners to define and execute on growth strategies and operational initiatives.
• Mobilise functional teams to deliver growth targets and embed performance accountability.
• Monitor growth delivery, resolving barriers and reinforcing strategic objectives at operational levels.
• Evaluate financial and customer returns on initiatives to ensure alignment with business viability.
• Formulate and develop multi-function operating frameworks that contribute to sustainable growth.

Client-Driven Innovation and Change

• Champion the adoption of innovative digital solutions and practices.
• Lead change management efforts to embed digital ways of working across the organisation.
• Monitor competitive landscape and identify opportunities to improve products, services, or operations.
• Drive continuous improvement and innovation within the team to enhance customer outcomes.
• Shape client experience initiatives through project ownership and delivery responsibility.
• Lead operational change, ensuring readiness, engagement, and measured impact across delivery teams.
• Influence and communicate across all levels of the business to minimise resistance to change and ensure onboarding of target audiences.
• Scan the external environment to investigate alternative delivery models and offer innovative advice for competitive advantage.
• Drive change management activities across a single value chain for optimal adoption of change.

Leading Talent

• Build and develop a diverse, high-performing digital technology team.
• Foster a culture of learning, collaboration, and accountability.
• Embed people processes and values into business routines, reinforcing a strong leadership culture.
• Develop workforce capabilities to meet business plan execution requirements and future readiness.
• Create inclusive team environments that support performance, wellbeing, and growth.
• Address escalated people issues and ensure application of performance and development processes.
• Develop future leaders through mentorship, stretch assignments, and tailored development experiences.
• Provide expertise and advice in the development and implementation of human capability and accountability frameworks across functions.
• Direct the development and implementation of human capability strategies to support people management priorities.

Operational Effectiveness

• Establish infrastructure governance councils to align strategic direction with operational delivery needs
• Define decision rights and escalation protocols for technology architecture and vendor management
• Monitor infrastructure performance against business requirements and strategic objectives
• Ensure operational excellence in the delivery and support of digital infrastructure.
• Optimise processes for efficiency, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
• Operationalise strategic goals into functional plans with clear deliverables, timelines, scorecards with team and individual KPIs to enable effective tracking of business and individual performance.
• Set appropriate financial and other resourcing plans to enable business performance, tracking against budgets and investments for both current and long-term strategic goals.
• Ensure integration across business units by resolving operational friction and dependencies.
• Represent the business area in operational forums and with delivery partners.
• Leverage data insights to improve operational effectiveness and customer outcomes.
• Continuously improve processes for agility, quality, and alignment with customer needs and digital tools.
• Identify problems and formulate alternate solutions to resolve value chain conflicts.
• Provide expert advice on operating model, strategy, value chain formulation, and business controls/governance frameworks.

Digital Adoption

• Drive the adoption of digital tools and platforms across the business.
• Monitor digital maturity and identify opportunities for further digitisation.
• Execute digital initiatives and promote adoption of technologies that improve efficiency and user experience.
• Monitor digital platform performance and ensure integration with business processes and outcomes.
• Deliberately identify opportunities to digitise, automate, and implement solutions for customer primacy, innovation, and operational effectiveness.

Good Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Oversee governance, risk, and compliance for all digital technology operations.
• Ensure adherence to cybersecurity, data privacy, and regulatory standards.
• Implement governance, risk, and compliance frameworks in business processes and team routines.
• Promote risk awareness and lead the response to regulatory changes and emerging issues.
• Support audit readiness and ensure operational teams adhere to compliance requirements.
• Define and consolidate the risk profile for the business unit, manage critical risks, and ensure resolution feedback to stakeholders.
• Enable the development and implementation of integrated corporate governance frameworks in areas of specialisation.
• Influence the implementation of effective internal controls systems and corporate governance practices.

Data Monetisation

• Enable data-driven decision-making through reliable, accessible digital infrastructure.
• Support the development of data platforms that unlock business value.
• Apply data insights to support business planning and decision-making in the business area.
• Develop mechanisms to ensure data is collected, validated, and used to drive performance improvement.
• Oversee the explicit use of data and its inherent value to explore opportunities and guide decisions.

Stakeholder Management

• Chair infrastructure governance forums with platform engineering, security, and business stakeholders
• Engage with enterprise architecture teams to ensure Business Banking infrastructure aligns with group standards
• Engage with executive stakeholders to align digital infrastructure with business priorities.
• Manage relationships with technology vendors and partners.
• Manage relationships with key stakeholders to support aligned delivery and issue resolution.
• Ensure stakeholder expectations are managed and engagement is consistent with transformation priorities.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• Education/ Qualification:
  
  Post Graduate Degree: Honours Degree, Post Graduate Diploma and Professional Qualifications [NQF8]

Field of Study:

• Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Work Experience:

• years experience in a specific capability of importance to the bank, including a track record of 5 years in a people management position in a large enterprise.
• Experience must include developing integrated customer-centric product or service solutions or corporate practice development while working with and managing stakeholders across business and/or functional areas and budget management.
• Exposure to digital transformation and data-driven decision-making is preferred.
• Demonstrated success in building and leading high-performing technology teams.
• Experience in engaging executive stakeholders and managing complex vendor relationships.

COMPETENCIES

Leadership Competencies:

• Strategic Thinking
• Business Acumen
• Communication
• Influence
• Leadership
• Creativity and Innovation
• Delivering Results
• Adaptability
• Collaboration

Knowledge and Skills:

• Digital infrastructure strategy and architecture
• Cloud computing and platform management
• Cybersecurity and risk management
• Data centre and network operations
• Vendor and contract management
• Digital transformation and change leadership
• Budgeting and financial management for technology
• Regulatory compliance in digital environments
• Agile and DevOps methodologies
• Emerging technology trends (AI, IoT, automation)

Education

Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised