Equity Bank is one of the region’s leading Banks whose purpose is to transform the lives and livelihoods of the people of Africa socially and economically by availing them modern, inclusive financial services that maximize their opportunities. With a strong footprint in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, DRC, and South Sudan, Equity Bank is now home to nearly 20 million customers - the largest customer base in Africa. Currently, the Bank is seeking additional talent to serve as the Manager, DFS IT Operations, whose holder reports to the Manager, IT Operations.

MANAGER, DFS IT OPERATIONS.

Job Summary

The Manager, DFS IT Operations is responsible for ensuring the stability, availability, and security of the DFS Core Platform and all its integrations at the subsidiary level. Operating within group-wide standards and frameworks, this role leads operational excellence at both strategic and tactical levels, driving high-velocity incident detection and recovery while maintaining system stability in a high-change environment. The Manager will implement and embed the group Center of Excellence operational standards locally, ensuring any subsidiary-specific optimizations required by local regulations or operational requirements are properly documented and socialized both within the subsidiary and at group level.

Working closely with local support teams, including networks, data center, and core banking, this role ensures endto-end service management through automated, code-driven operations and a collaborative approach to delivery. The key driver for the Senior Manager, DFS IT Operations will be to maintain world-class platform availability and performance at the subsidiary level, fostering a culture of operational readiness and coaching a team of assistant managers and engineers across core platform and middleware integration functions to deliver exceptional service to the business and its customers.

Key Responsibilities and Accountability

Operational Excellence & Incident Management

Execute the 1-5-10 operational mandate for the Integrations Platform, ensuring rapid detection, investigation, and resolution of incidents affecting middleware, APIs, and partner integrations
Lead day-to-day incident response for all integration-related issues, coordinating with partners, internal teams, and the Core Platform team to restore service.
Serve as the primary technical escalation point for the NOC on integration and partner-related incidents.
Conduct thorough root cause analysis for integration failures, partner connectivity issues, and middleware incidents, implementing preventive measures.
Maintain 24/7 operational coverage through effective shift scheduling, ensuring coordination with Core Platform operations. Integration Service Management.
Own end-to-end service availability and performance for all platform integrations, including airtime purchase, bank integrations, payment partners, and other regional services.
Establish and monitor Service Level Agreements with integration partners across the region.
Proactively monitor integration health, partner connectivity, transaction success rates, and performance metrics.
Track and report on partner performance, escalating chronic issues and driving resolution of recurring problems.

Partner Relationship & Escalation Management

Build and maintain strong technical relationships with integration partner organizations and their technical leadership.
Establish clear escalation matrices with all integration partners, ensuring efficient issue resolution pathways.
Coordinate technical reviews with partners to address service quality issues, optimize integration performance, and drive continuous improvement.
Manage partner escalations effectively, ensuring timely resolution and appropriate communication to stakeholders.
Maintain comprehensive tracking of partner issues, resolution timelines, and outstanding actions.

Change & Release Management.

Review and provide technical input on all changes affecting integrations, middleware, and partner connectivity.
Collaborate closely with the Core Platform Manager to evaluate cross-platform dependencies and potential integration impacts.
Coordinate with integration partners on their planned changes, ensuring proper testing and controlled production deployment.
Prepare detailed change implementation and rollback plans for integration-related changes.
Submit all changes to the Senior Manager for approval, providing comprehensive risk assessments and partner coordination details.

Operational Readiness & Integration Onboarding

Partner with delivery teams during onboarding of new integration partners and services, ensuring operational readiness before go-live.
Define and validate operational acceptance criteria for new integrations, including monitoring, alerting, support procedures, and partner escalation paths.
Ensure comprehensive knowledge transfer from delivery teams and integration partners to the operations team.
Establish appropriate support arrangements, monitoring frameworks, and escalation processes for each new integration.

Middleware & Integration Platform Management.

Maintain the health, performance, and availability of the integration middleware platform supporting regional services.
Implement comprehensive monitoring and alerting for middleware components, integration flows, and partner endpoints
Coordinate with infrastructure and platform teams to address middleware infrastructure dependencies
Ensure proper capacity planning for the integration platform to support transaction growth and new partner onboarding.

Automation & Continuous Improvement

Drive automation of integration monitoring, health checks, and common remediation tasks.
Develop automated alerting and diagnostic tools that accelerate incident detection and resolution.
Identify patterns in integration failures and implement systematic improvements to reduce recurring issues.
Contribute to the Technical Operations Center of Excellence by standardizing integration operational practices across subsidiaries.

Team Leadership & Development

Lead, mentor, and develop a team comprising a Senior Officer and multiple support engineers.
Conduct regular performance reviews, provide coaching and feedback, and create clear development paths for team members.
Build team expertise in integration technologies, partner systems, and troubleshooting methodologies.
Foster collaborative relationships with the Core Platform team, ensuring seamless cross-team coordination.
Facilitate blameless post-mortems and knowledge-sharing sessions that drive team learning and capability building.

Compliance & Asset Management.

Maintain accurate inventory of all integration platform assets, partner connection details, API versions, and certificates.
Coordinate timely renewal of integration-related certificates, API credentials, and access tokens.
Ensure integration operations comply with security standards, data residency requirements, and regulatory expectations.
Support Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery testing for integration services, implementing identified improvements

CORE ACCOUNTABILITIES AND DELIVERABLES

Platform Availability, Operational Excellence and the 1-5-10 Mandate Accountable for DFS Core Platform and middleware integration availability, performance and security at the subsidiary level, meeting agreed SLA targets and achieving the group-wide 1-5-10 operational mandate. Deliver monthly platform performance reports covering incident metrics, detection, investigation, and resolution times for local leadership review with group participation, with adopted reports presented to Group IT and Business Leadership. Deliver an operational excellence roadmap with SRE transformation milestones and regular briefings consolidating technical risks, opportunities, and recommendations for local and group stakeholders.

OPEX Budget and Local Cost Optimization: Accountable for developing, managing, and optimizing the subsidiary IT Operations OPEX budget, ensuring fiscal discipline and value delivery within the locally set budget parameters. Deliver annual budget plans with strategic justifications, monthly financial reports with variance explanations, and cost optimization initiatives demonstrating year-over-year efficiency improvements. Liaise with the group on vendor and partner performance where local operational impact is identified, providing local context and data to support group-level vendor management decisions as well as provide input to vendor performance review discussions.

Operational Readiness, Change Management and Cross-Functional Collaboration Accountable for operational readiness at the subsidiary level and for the local change management process, including aligning local teams on deployments and activities required ahead of changes. Own the escalation of changes through the group technology review process, confirming readiness for group CAB, presenting changes for approval, and coordinating scheduling. Deliver operational readiness certifications for local deployments, coordinated deployment plans, high-risk change assessments, monthly change performance reports with failed change root cause analyses, and stakeholder communications for planned service disruptions.

CoE Standards Adoption, Local Optimisation and Compliance Accountable for the local implementation and adoption of group Technical Operations Center of Excellence standards and operational practices. Identify, document and socialise any subsidiary-specific optimisations required by local regulations or operational context, ensuring these are formally aligned with group before adoption. Deliver local CoE adoption assessments, standardised operational procedures and runbooks aligned to group standards, compliance status reports, audit remediation plans with closure tracking, and BC/DR testing results with improvement actions escalated to group where relevant.

People Leadership, Culture, Continuous Improvement and Innovation Accountable for the performance, development and organisational effectiveness of the subsidiary Technical Operations team, setting the cultural tone and driving continuous improvement and automation within the local team. Deliver quarterly, half-yearly and annual performance reviews for direct reports, succession plans, talent development strategies, quarterly team performance assessments, capability gap analyses with training plans, automation roadmaps with implementation milestones and efficiency metrics demonstrating toil reduction and KPI improvements e.g., MTTR, MTBF.

KEY DECISIONS MADE BY THE JOB-HOLDER (NOT RECOMMENDATIONS) AND HOW OFTEN

Change Approvals and Production Deployment Authorization (Daily/Weekly).

Final approval or rejection of changes affecting systems within the subsidiary DFS domain, particularly high-risk or complex changes, prior to escalation through the group CAB process.
Authorization for local production deployments that meet or fail operational readiness standards.
Decision to halt or proceed with deployments when operational concerns arise at the subsidiary level.
Timing and sequencing of local changes in coordination with local and group teams to prevent conflicts, ahead of group CAB scheduling, and to ensure vendor support is available where needed

Organizational Structure and Resource Allocation (Quarterly/As Needed).

Local team structure adjustments, role definitions, and span of control decisions as the subsidiary function evolves.
Resource allocation decisions between core platform and middleware integration functions based on local business priorities.
Hiring approvals and succession planning decisions for assistant manager and engineer positions within the subsidiary team.
Performance ratings and corrective actions for direct reports and escalated team issues

Major Incident Escalation and Crisis Response (As Incidents Occur).

When to personally engage in major incident response versus delegating to assistant managers.
Decision to escalate incidents to local IT leadership, Business leadership, group IT Operations, or external stakeholders
Authorization for emergency changes or workarounds that deviate from standard processes during critical incidents, with immediate notification to the group.
Communication strategy and messaging for high-impact incidents affecting local business operations or customers

Local Operational Standards and Compliance Decisions (Quarterly/As Needed).

Adoption and local implementation of group 1-5-10 mandate strategies and SRE transformation priorities within the subsidiary.
Local operational readiness standards and acceptance criteria, implemented within the group framework and documented where subsidiary-specific optimizations are required.
Local CoE adoption priorities and sequencing, with any deviations from group standards formally documented and socialized with group IT Operations.
Decisions on local compliance responses where subsidiary-specific regulatory requirements differ from group standards, with formal documentation and group alignment required before adoption

QUALIFICATION, SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

University degree in Information Technology, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
Relevant professional certifications such as ITIL Foundation or higher, AWS/Azure/GCP certifications, or equivalent demonstrating operational and technical expertise

Technical Operations Leadership.

Minimum 5 to 7 years of progressive experience in technical operations, production support, or site reliability engineering, with at least 3 years in leadership roles managing teams in mission-critical 24/7 environments.
Demonstrated ability to lead a smaller, still-developing team and build operational capability from a low base while maintaining day-to-day service delivery.

Financial Services and Mobile Money Platform Operations.

Minimum 3 to 5 years operating financial services platforms, core banking systems, payment processing, or mobile money platforms, with a proven track record of maintaining high availability and managing operations in regulated environments with compliance requirements.
Direct experience with middleware and integration technologies supporting financial services platforms is required.
Experience with the Huawei Mobile Money platform is an advantage.

Group Governance and Matrix Environment Experience.

Demonstrated experience operating within a group governance structure, managing upward to a group function and working effectively within a matrixed or multi-stakeholder environment.
Ability to represent the subsidiary's operational position to group counterparts, contribute to group-level forums, and align local decisions with group standards while managing locally specific requirements.

Change Leadership and Framework Implementation.

Proven track record leading the local implementation of operational improvement frameworks, including automation initiatives, process standardization, SRE practices adoption, or service management framework embedding, while maintaining service delivery and managing stakeholder expectations across local and group audiences.

Vendor Delivery Team and Partner Interfacing

Demonstrated experience interfacing with vendor delivery and project teams, managing local technology partner relationships and coordinating multi-party incident resolution without direct contractual authority.
Ability to maintain accountability and drive resolution across external dependencies through relationship management and structured escalation.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Demonstrated ability to collaborate with peer leaders across local IT functions including infrastructure, network, data centre, core banking and security, influencing outcomes through relationship management, coordinating cross-functional incident resolution and establishing effective working agreements with teams outside direct control.

Local OPEX Budget Management and Cost Optimization

Experience managing a local operational budget, tracking expenditures against plan, identifying cost optimization opportunities, and reporting on financial performance to local leadership and group IT Operations.
Ability to demonstrate value for money in operational decisions and flag budget risks proactively.

Incident and Crisis Management:

Hands-on experience leading major incident response for business-critical systems, coordinating response across multiple local teams and group escalation channels, managing stakeholder communication during critical outages and implementing systematic improvements from post-incident reviews.
Comfortable making rapid, high-impact decisions under pressure while maintaining clear communication upward to local leadership and group.

If you meet the above requirements, submit your application by 17th September 2026. Please include an updated Curriculum Vitae, copies of the relevant certificates and testimonials.

All applications should be in soft copy and through the Link Indicated below, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted:

Link: https://equitybank.taleo.net/careersection/ext_new/jobsearch.ftl

Equity Bank is an equal opportunity employer. We value the diversity of individuals, ideas, perspectives, insights, values, and what they bring to the workplace.

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