Manager – Application & Observability Operations at Safaricom Kenya

Key Accountabilities and Decision Ownership:

Application Operations & Support

• Manage daily performance and stability of assigned M-Pesa applications across markets.
• Own incident management, ensuring timely restoration of service and post-incident reviews.
• Coordinate with L2 vendors, infrastructure, and local market teams to resolve issues and fulfill service requests.
• Ensure technical SLA compliance for applications run by Product Ops or third parties.
• Maintain SOPs, configuration documents, and contribute to audit readiness and DR plans.

Observability & Monitoring

• Configure and maintain observability tools (Grafana, Prometheus, Dynatrace).
• Define system health metrics, implement alert thresholds, and ensure visibility across platforms.

Automation & AIOps

• Implement and maintain automated workflows for incident notification, escalation, and resolution.
• Support deployment of AIOps use cases (e.g., anomaly detection, noise suppression, automated RCA).
• Work with engineering and support teams to enable automation of repetitive tasks and enhance tool efficiency.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure applications meet data protection, security, and compliance standards.
• Participate in capacity planning and risk mitigation activities.
• Coordinate and support system audits and control documentation.

Tools & Platform Ownership

• Administer and maintain key enterprise tools including observability (Grafana, Prometheus, Dynatrace), collaboration (SharePoint, Teams, O365), and ticketing/ITSM platforms.
• Coordinate onboarding of applications into monitoring tools, ensuring tagging, dashboard setup, and alert workflows are completed.
• Manage integration of monitoring and automation tools with CI/CD pipelines and operational workflows.
• Oversee access provisioning and compliance for managed tools (e.g., Active Directory, SSO, MFA), ensuring audit readiness and license tracking.
• Work with procurement and platform owners to coordinate renewals, license utilization reviews, and vendor support contracts.

Stakeholder Communication

• Serve as a first escalation point for critical issues and major incidents.
• Ensure clear communication during incidents and delivery of incident reports to senior stakeholders.
• Provide regular reporting on service health, incident trends, and automation outcomes.

Team & Vendor Coordination

• Manage a team of engineers/specialists.
• Liaise with third-party vendors for incident escalations, maintenance, and service improvements.
• Contribute to vendor performance tracking and compliance to service levels.

Qualifications

Knowledge and Experience

• 5–7 years in IT service operations, application support, or observability roles.
• 2+ years experience in leading or coordinating technical teams or third-party vendors.
• Strong understanding of ITIL processes (incident, change, problem, request).
• Hands-on experience with observability tools and automation platforms.
• Knowledge of infrastructure (Linux, Windows, TCP/IP, VPN, firewalls), databases (Oracle, MongoDB, Postgres), and cloud-based systems.
• Familiarity with mobile payments or financial service platforms is an advantage.