Officer, Digital Financial Services & Project Risks

Role Overview

In this second-line assurance role, you will independently assess whether the Bank’s digital financial services and related projects have well-designed controls that work effectively in practice. Your oversight will span digital banking channels, digital lending, merchant acquiring and Data Lake operations, helping the Bank manage technology, operational and data-protection risks while meeting applicable regulatory requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Assess governance and compliance arrangements for digital services, lending models and data-processing activities, including alignment with relevant Central Bank of Kenya requirements and Kenya’s data-protection legislation.
• Work with the Data Protection Officer and risk colleagues to review data flows, Data Lake ingestion, technical vulnerabilities, system changes, APIs and privileged access controls.
• Challenge control designs and test their operation across digital channels; confirm that new products have approved procedures, workflows and appropriate authorisation controls before launch.
• Review risk assessments and technical documentation for new features, lending platforms, third-party integrations and projects before production release, then follow control weaknesses and security-test findings through to resolution.
• Evaluate business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements for key digital services. Take part in failover exercises and assess recovery targets, failback processes, offline queues, reconciliation and data integrity.
• Test controls for digital lending and merchant acquiring, including scoring rules, approval and disbursement limits, settlement, float reconciliation, fees, chargebacks, reversals and write-offs.
• Monitor control exceptions and override queues, and support investigations into transaction failures, service outages, fraud events and privacy incidents. Track corrective actions and root-cause fixes with first-line teams.
• Maintain risk and control assessments, develop and report key risk indicators, and prepare dashboards and assurance updates for senior management and Board risk reporting.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business or a related discipline.
• At least five years of experience in banking or information technology, including exposure to digital financial services and projects.
• Practical knowledge of IT operations, technology controls, IT risk, IT audit and project management.
• Understanding of information-security frameworks or standards such as ISO 27001 and NIST SP 800-53, and relevant requirements from the Central Bank of Kenya and the Kenya Data Protection Act, 2019 and its regulations. Familiarity with GDPR is also relevant.
• Experience or knowledge in areas such as security testing, vulnerability management, access controls, business continuity, digital payments or data privacy.
• Professional certification such as CISA, CISM or CISSP is an advantage; other relevant security credentials, including Security+ or CEH, are also applicable.
• Strong analytical, investigation and problem-solving abilities, with clear report-writing and communication skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively across risk, technology, operations and privacy teams.