Associate Director, Platform Lead – Africa at KPMG

Position Summary

• At KPMG, you’ll join a team of diverse and dedicated problem solvers, connected by a common cause: to turn insight into opportunity for clients and communities around the world.
• We seek a professional with deep technical experience with platform design, development, and ecosystem integration. This individual will be responsible for helping our clients shape their platform and ecosystem strategies with a focus on bringing those strategies to life through APIs, bespoke technology platforms and service orchestration. This individual will work with our clients in setting the technical vision and leading the digital platform development.
• This is a Full Time, Hybrid Pan-African role, with responsibility for leading a team across the continent, and the resource will be based in either Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Lagos.

Role and Responsibilities
Strategy

•  Provide support around platform and ecosystem initiatives to the Africa digital transformation team.
•  Work with regional practice leads to define go-to-market strategies for platform initiatives and products.
•  Support with the development of platform monetization strategies which cut across open APIs, open banking, open finance and open economy paradigms.
•  Leverage regional alliances with technology partners (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, AWS, Google, etc) to drive proactive leads generation, joint pitch, pipeline management and conversions where required.
•  Manage, coach and grow the platform and ecosystem development team.
•  Participate in the development and publication of thought leadership.
•  Leverage local and global KPMG artefacts, SMEs, and other network assets to advance the firm’s platform agenda.

Client Impact

•  Collaborate with product management and engineering teams to prioritize platform initiatives, define technical requirements, and ensure that new features and functionalities are aligned with customer needs.
•  Take ownership of the strategic vision for the platform service line and lead all development efforts including product design (UX/UI), architecture, development, CI/CD, support, and innovation.
•  Establish and maintain best practices for platform development, including coding standards, testing methodologies, and deployment procedures.
•  Collaborate with architecture and security teams to ensure that the platform is scalable, efficient, and secure.
•  Design and develop integrations between products and third-party systems and applications, using APIs, webhooks, and other integration tools
•  Lead the development and implementation of new platform features and functionalities, ensuring that they meet quality standards, are delivered on time, and within budget.
•  Collaborate with product management, engineering, and business development teams to identify new integration opportunities and prioritize integration development.
•  Conduct integration testing and debugging to ensure that integrations are functioning correctly and troubleshoot any issues that arise.
•  Develop and maintain integration documentation, including integration guides, API documentation, and technical specifications.
•  Conduct regular platform performance analysis and optimize it to improve speed and efficiency.
•  Ensure that platform documentation is up-to-date, and that knowledge is shared across the organization.
•  Develop and maintain an ecosystem of integrations that enhance the value proposition of client’s product/ platforms and improves user experience.
•  Share technological visions, opportunities, and risks company-wide.
•  Ensure that integrations comply with security and privacy policies and best practices.
•  Stay up to date with industry trends and best practices for integration development and ecosystem management

Finance

•  Deliver on targets and goals (including sales goals).
•  Provide annual budget input for the area of responsibility for approval and integration into service line/ growth area budget.
•  Manage the annual budget, including costs for designated area.

Qualifications, Experience and Skills
The ideal candidate has:

•  Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or any other relevant field.
•  Minimum of 10 years’ experience, at least 5 of which should have been in a platform related role.
•  Practical experience in product management or product development.
•  Deep experience with scaling distribution of products and services via platforms.
•  Strong technical knowledge of platform development, including experience with cloud computing, microservices, and databases.
•  Strong technical knowledge of integration technologies, including APIs, webhooks, and data transfer protocols.
•  Deep experience and expertise in programming languages such as Java, Python, Javascript, C#, and PHP especially in the context of developing APIs (REST, SOAP, GraphQL), webhooks and other integration tools.
•  Extensive experience with standard integration tools and platforms like MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, Apache Camel etc.
•  Experience with collaboration tools such as Github, Jira, slack etc.
•  Experience working with third-party partners and customers to develop and implement integrations.
•  Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to identify and resolve complex technical issues (including integration issues).
•  Experience in leading cross-functional teams and managing people.
•  Experience with Agile development methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban.
•  Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to communicate technical information to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.