O&M Other Platforms Senior Officer at Equity Bank Kenya

THE ROLE PURPOSE

The Senior Officer, Operations & Maintenance – Other Platforms is a technical subject matter expert and hands-on technical lead responsible for the stability, availability and operational excellence of the integration middleware platform and partner integrations. This role provides deep technical expertise during complex incidents, leads partner and vendor escalations, drives automation initiatives, serves as the primary technical consultant for operations engineers and acts as the operational liaison with delivery teams and integration partners on production readiness. The Senior Officer shapes integration operational practices through technical mentorship, knowledge management and continuous improvement, ensuring world-class operational standards and capability development across the integrations domain.

the KEY responsibilities 

Advanced Integration Operations & Multi-Party Incident Leadership

• Serve as primary technical expert for complex integration and middleware incidents requiring advanced troubleshooting across distributed systems, multiple fault domains (middleware, APIs, partner systems, network connectivity), coordinating with internal teams, integration partners, and vendors while providing hands-on guidance to operations engineers. Execute the 1-5-10 mandate for complex integration incidents, conduct thorough root cause analysis for recurring problems involving partner dependencies, and set the technical standard for integration incident response excellence.

Deep Integration Platform Knowledge, Operational Readiness & Change Advisory

• Maintain deep expertise in integration middleware architecture, API management, message queuing, event-driven patterns and synchronous/asynchronous communication protocols (REST, SOAP, gRPC) serving as technical authority on integration operations. Monitor integration flows and partner connectivity proactively identifying performance degradation or emerging issues; execute complex maintenance activities including middleware upgrades, partner onboarding and integration performance tuning. Serve as primary operational liaison with delivery teams on new integration onboarding, assessing operational readiness evaluating API observability, distributed tracing coverage, error handling, security (mTLS, OAuth2, certificate management) and partner support arrangements. Review proposed integration changes assessing technical risk, partner coordination requirements and cross-platform impact; lead technical validation and post-deployment verification for complex integration changes.

Partner Technical Relationship, Automation & Observability

• Lead complex partner escalations as primary technical interface, engaging partner technical teams with comprehensive diagnostic information while building effective technical relationships and navigating varying technical capabilities and support models. Track partner escalations, evaluate partner technical responses and drive knowledge transfer to reduce partner dependency. Lead automation initiatives for integration operations including automated health checks, transaction monitoring, partner connectivity validation and self-healing solutions. Implement advanced observability for integration flows focusing on "golden signals" (latency, traffic, errors, saturation) using distributed tracing (Jaeger, OpenTelemetry) and log aggregation (ELK stack, Splunk). Drive CI/CD improvements including automated testing, quality gates and deployment automation strategies (blue-green, canary releases). Manage integration workloads on container platforms (OpenShift/Kubernetes) including ConfigMaps, Secrets, CRDs, Network Policies and container security.

Knowledge Management, Compliance, Mentorship & Process Improvement

• Champion knowledge management creating high-quality knowledge base articles on partner-specific troubleshooting, integration patterns and resolution procedures while guiding engineers on effective documentation practices. Develop integration runbooks, partner escalation guides and diagnostic workflows; maintain partner technical documentation. Evaluate integration operational compliance ensuring adherence to security standards (API security, mTLS, OAuth2, secret management) data residency requirements and regulatory expectations; support audits by providing integration technical documentation. Serve as primary technical consultant for operations engineers; mentor junior engineers through hands-on coaching during partner incidents and integration troubleshooting; share technical knowledge on integration patterns, API technologies and observability tools. Facilitate technical discussions across teams; represent integrations team in technical forums; identify inefficiencies in integration operational processes and lead process improvement initiatives; contribute to Technical Operations Center of Excellence documenting integration best practices.

Qualifications

EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS

Must Have

• 3-5 years of progressive experience in software development, DevOps, platform engineering, integration development or technical operations with at least 1-2 years working with APIs, microservices or integration technologies in production environments, demonstrating growth in technical complexity and responsibility with experience participating in incident resolution for distributed systems.
•  Working knowledge of integration technologies (RESTful APIs, message queuing, containerization - Docker, Kubernetes basics) with hands-on experience in at least one of: API gateways, message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Redis) or middleware platforms. Understanding of integration architecture patterns (synchronous/asynchronous communication, event-driven architecture, pub/sub messaging) and ability to troubleshoot technical issues across multiple system components (applications, APIs, databases, network).
• Experience with automation and scripting using at least one programming/scripting language (Python, Bash, PowerShell, Go, JavaScript) to solve operational problems and automate tasks. Familiarity with CI/CD concepts and tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) and basic understanding of Infrastructure-as-Code concepts (Terraform, Ansible).
• Experience with monitoring, logging and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Splunk, cloud-native monitoring solutions) with understanding of key performance metrics and ability to use logs and metrics to diagnose issues. Familiarity with "golden signals" (Latency, Traffic, Errors, Saturation).
• Good technical communication and collaboration skills with demonstrated ability to document technical solutions, create basic runbooks or troubleshooting guides and work effectively with cross-functional teams.

Nice to Have

• Exposure to financial services, banking, payment systems, fintech or mobile money platforms; understanding of security and compliance in regulated industries (KYC, data protection, audit requirements); experience working with external partners, vendors or third-party APIs.
• Hands-on experience with container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, OpenShift, ECS) including deployment and configuration management (ConfigMaps, Secrets); understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience with advanced observability concepts (distributed tracing - Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, Zipkin; APM tools; log correlation across distributed systems); knowledge of integration security practices (OAuth2, JWT, TLS/SSL certificates, secrets management, API security vulnerabilities).
• Experience with Service Management frameworks (ITIL Foundation certification or practical Incident/Problem/Change Management experience); involvement in technical mentorship activities (onboarding, knowledge-sharing, creating training materials); exposure to multi-region, multi-environment operations.

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related technical field (equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered for exceptionally qualified candidates).
• Relevant professional certifications such as ITIL Foundation or higher, Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD), cloud platform certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP) or API management certifications; advanced degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or related technical field.