Chief Technology Officer

The main purpose of this role is to provide executive leadership and operational direction for the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) technology environment in the Business Solutions and Technology Department (BSTD) by translating information technology (IT) strategy into disciplined execution across technology operations, engineering, platforms, applications, infrastructure, cyber-resilient services, delivery performance and vendor management.

Detailed description

The successful candidate will be responsible for the following key performance areas:

• Ensure the delivery of reliable, secure, scalable and cost-effective technology services.
• Build a leading engineering practice that improves delivery quality, operational resilience, automation, reuse, productivity and continuous improvement in support of the SARB’s long-term objectives.
• Manage the day-to-day execution and direction of staff, ensuring operational discipline and aligning technology delivery, service performance and execution priorities.
• Provide strategic direction for the SARB’s IT operations, including infrastructure, application development, integration, security operations, business process re-engineering, networks, outsourcing, and computer and auxiliary operations and support.
• Direct the development and implementation of IT strategic and tactical goals, policies and procedures for existing and new technologies, and develop and execute strategic plans to optimise the use of IT in support of the SARB’s mission and objectives.
• Establish, govern and continuously improve a leading engineering practice across BSTD, including engineering standards, secure-by-design practices, reusable patterns, code quality, automated testing, development, security and operations (Dev Sec Ops ), release management, observability, platform engineering and modern software delivery practices.
• Drive delivery excellence and operational performance across IT by improving predictability, throughput, service reliability, automation, risk reduction, technical debt management, life cycle management and technology cost optimisation.
• Build the engineering, operations and delivery capability required for a high-performing technology organisation, including talent pipelines, communities of practice, capability uplift and a culture of accountability, learning and continuous improvement.
• Stay up to date with technology advances to provide thought leadership to the businesses served as well as own teams and the SARB.
• Provide leadership, sponsorship and oversight to programmes, as agreed with the Executive Programme Management Office (EPMO), to transform the existing technology environment.
• Develop and maintain strategic relationships with major stakeholders within and outside the SARB to ensure that strategies remain relevant and sustainable, changes impacting the external environments are appropriately managed, and partnerships with key vendors are maintained and enhanced.
• Implement and enforce policy to ensure the protection of enterprise IT assets and the integrity, security and privacy of information entrusted to or maintained by the SARB.
• Oversee the development and implementation of IT procedures and processes to ensure that they are aligned with COBIT [Control Objectives for Business and IT – governance model and industry standard], and other agreed governance frameworks adopted by the SARB, and are at the agreed maturity level as measured by the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).
• Direct the development and maintenance of enterprise-wide technical disaster recovery plans to ensure the timely and effective restoration of IT services in the event of a disaster.
• Ensure a service-oriented, customer-focused department that supports the ongoing operations of…