M-Pesa Africa: Senior Manager - Service Operations

Role Overview

This leadership position places you in charge of technology operations across multiple M-PESA Africa markets, with direct accountability for keeping every critical platform available, secure, and performing to agreed standards. Day to day, you will oversee the full operational ecosystem—from monitoring and service desk to enterprise application support and incident response—while guiding the team through continuous improvement and intelligent automation initiatives. Your work directly underpins the company’s revenue-generating services, regulatory obligations, and customer experience, making operational stability a core business enabler rather than a back-office concern.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end operational health of all technology services, including real-time financial platforms, AML/financial crime systems, enterprise applications, and shared infrastructure, ensuring they meet availability, resilience, and performance targets.
• Lead the 24/7 operations model across monitoring, service desk, and Level 1/2 support, defining clear shift coverage, triage procedures, escalation paths, and runbooks that enable rapid detection, response, and restoration.
• Drive all ITIL-aligned service management processes—incident, problem, change, request, and service level management—with a focus on process maturity, audit readiness, and measurable continual improvement.
• Act as the senior authority during major incidents, mobilizing cross-functional teams, communicating with executive stakeholders, and enforcing structured command-and-control and restoration discipline.
• Govern vendor and managed service provider performance by tracking SLAs/OLAs, holding regular service reviews, driving remediation plans, and ensuring clear separation between supplier accountability and internal support ownership.
• Manage the technology operations budget, including cost control, resource utilization, operational investment decisions, and supplier spend governance, while identifying efficiency gains through automation.
• Build and develop a high-performing, multi-disciplinary operations team across multiple geographies, embedding Agile ways of working, coaching, succession planning, and a culture of ownership and continuous learning.
• Champion the transformation from reactive to proactive operations by adopting observability, AIOps, automation, self-healing capabilities, and predictive insights across the technology estate.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Degree in Technology, Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline; advanced qualifications are a plus.
• 15+ years of experience leading enterprise technology operations in complex, mission-critical environments, with a proven track record of managing large-scale support and service management teams across multiple regions.
• Deep expertise in ITIL-aligned service management practices and direct experience running 24/7 monitoring, incident response, and production support functions.
• Demonstrated ability to manage enterprise vendors, suppliers, and managed service providers, including contract compliance, financial governance, and performance improvement.
• Strong experience in operational budget management, cost optimization, and financial decision-making.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and executive communication skills, with the ability to influence leadership, local markets, and group functions.
• Experience operating within regulated and multi-country environments, supporting audits, risk management, compliance reviews, and regulatory requirements.
• Agile leadership experience within product-oriented delivery environments, coupled with a history of successful operational transformation and automation initiatives.
• Preferred background in mobile financial services, fintech, payments, banking, telecommunications, or other regulated digital technology sectors.
• Preferred experience working across African markets or other multinational technology landscapes, with exposure to observability, AIOps, ITSM platforms, and zero-touch operations.
• Preferred experience in scaling operations for new markets, including localization, vendor consolidation, managed service redesign, and transition to BAU.