Head of Commercial Payments Engineering

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.

Belonging at Absa

Absa is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from suitably qualified individuals from diverse backgrounds. In support of our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) commitments and Employment Equity objectives, preference may be given to candidates from underrepresented designated groups, including persons with disabilities. We encourage applicants who may require reasonable accommodation during the recruitment process to let us know so that appropriate support can be provided.

Job Summary

Lead the agile solution design, deployment & ongoing optimization & evolution of enterprise wide technology products and services (full stack engineering & ownership / control) in low complexity environments.

Job Description

The Head of Engineering – Commercial Payments is accountable for the end-to-end engineering strategy, architecture, design, development, delivery, reliability and continuous improvement of Commercial Payments technology products and platforms.

The role provides strategic and technical leadership across the commercial payments value chain, including merchant acquiring, point-of-sale (POS), SoftPOS, e-commerce payment gateways, QR payments, digital wallets, payment switching, transaction processing, merchant onboarding and servicing, settlement, reconciliation and associated integration services.

Working in partnership with the CIO, business product owners, enterprise architecture, infrastructure, cybersecurity, risk and other technology functions, the incumbent will translate business strategy into scalable, secure and resilient engineering solutions that support revenue growth, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and superior merchant experiences.

The successful candidate will be accountable for the full technology lifecycle, from solution ideation and architecture through engineering, testing, deployment, production support and ongoing optimisation. The role will drive engineering excellence through modern software engineering practices, automation, DevSecOps, cloud and platform modernisation, data-driven operational management and the responsible adoption of AI-enabled engineering capabilities.

The incumbent will lead multidisciplinary engineering and business analysis teams, build sustainable technical capability, manage strategic technology vendors and ensure that Commercial Payments technology remains fit for purpose, resilient, cost-effective and aligned with Absa’s long-term technology strategy.

Job Description

1. Engineering Strategy and Technology Leadership

* Define and execute the Commercial Payments engineering strategy, aligned to the CIO’s strategic direction, business objectives and Group Technology standards.

* Translate business priorities into an executable engineering roadmap covering platform modernisation, digital payment capabilities, technical debt reduction, resilience, scalability and innovation.

* Provide end-to-end engineering leadership across the commercial payments technology value chain, ensuring alignment between business requirements, solution architecture, development, integration, infrastructure and operational support.

* Act as the principal technology and engineering partner to senior business stakeholders and product owners, providing clear advice on technical options, trade-offs, feasibility, cost-to-value and delivery implications.

* Establish a clear target-state architecture and phased modernisation roadmap that balances immediate business needs with long-term strategic technology outcomes.

* Drive engineering decisions that improve payment acceptance, transaction processing performance, merchant experience, operational efficiency and commercial growth.

* Ensure that technology investment decisions are supported by measurable business outcomes, engineering benefits, risk assessments and total cost of ownership.

* Represent Commercial Payments engineering in relevant technology, architecture, risk, governance and business prioritisation forums.

2. Solution Architecture and Engineering Design

* Lead the design and implementation of end-to-end payment solutions across front-end channels, payment gateways, switching platforms, integration layers, APIs, data services and back-end processing systems.

* Ensure that solution designs are secure, scalable, highly available, resilient, supportable and aligned with enterprise architecture principles and technology standards.

* Provide technical oversight across payment platforms and services, including card transaction processing, merchant acquiring, e-commerce, POS, SoftPOS, QR payments, digital wallets, settlement and reconciliation.

* Guide architecture decisions relating to API-led integration, event-driven architecture, real-time processing, cloud adoption, containerisation, distributed systems and modern application design.

* Ensure that solutions are designed for high transaction throughput, low latency, fault tolerance, recoverability and predictable performance under peak transaction volumes.

* Establish and maintain engineering design standards, reusable components, reference architectures, integration patterns and technical documentation.

* Ensure appropriate consideration of non-functional requirements, including security, performance, capacity, availability, maintainability, observability and disaster recovery.

* Partner with Group Architecture, Infrastructure, Cybersecurity and other technology functions to ensure solutions align with enterprise standards while addressing the specific requirements of payment processing.

* Challenge unnecessary complexity, technology duplication and point solutions that increase long-term operational cost or create architectural fragmentation.

* Ensure that technical debt is identified, prioritised and addressed through a managed engineering improvement roadmap.

3. Software Engineering, DevSecOps and Engineering Excellence

* Establish and continuously improve engineering practices across development teams, ensuring consistent standards for software design, coding, testing, security, deployment and maintenance.

* Drive the adoption of modern software engineering principles, including domain-driven design where appropriate, modular architecture, API-first development, asynchronous processing and reusable services.

* Implement and optimise CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, infrastructure as code, automated security controls and standardised release processes.

* Promote automation-first engineering, reducing manual deployment activities, operational interventions, repetitive tasks and avoidable human error.

* Embed security by design through secure coding standards, code reviews, vulnerability management, dependency controls and automated security testing throughout the software development lifecycle.

* Ensure effective engineering quality controls through unit testing, integration testing, regression testing, performance testing, end-to-end testing and production verification.

* Drive consistent engineering standards across teams, including source control, branching strategies, code quality, release management, environment management and technical documentation.

* Establish clear accountability for code quality, application maintainability, defect prevention, engineering productivity and production readiness.

* Introduce appropriate engineering metrics to measure delivery performance, deployment frequency, change failure rate, recovery time, defect leakage and service reliability.

* Encourage exper