Open Roles at Safaricom Kenya

What we’re looking for; 

In keeping with our current business needs, we are looking for a person who meets the criteria indicated below  

• The Intelligent Ops & Governance Lead is accountable for enabling safe, resilient, and scalable end-to-end fintech operations across M-PESA's Financial Services portfolio. The role serves as the operational backbone of the cluster — ensuring policy clarity, process excellence, regulatory compliance, and risk discipline while actively enabling innovation and growth. 
•  A defining feature of this role is its governance boundary: Product owns commercial decisions; Operations owns compliance thresholds, operational guardrails, and risk frameworks that allow Product, Growth, Loyalty, and API teams to execute confidently within defined boundaries. The Lead uses AI, automation, and data to build an intelligent operations engine — one that is predictive, not merely reactive — ensuring fintech solutions operate with high reliability, strong fraud and risk controls, and consistent service standards across all customer touchpoints.  
• The Intelligent Ops & Governance Lead oversees end-to-end fintech operational integrity, including policy and process management, partner and ecosystem governance, regulatory and operational compliance, risk and control frameworks, service level governance, business continuity planning, and customer experience enablement. The role ensures that fintech solutions operate with high reliability, strong fraud and risk controls, and consistent service standards across all customer touchpoints. Anchored in regulatory clarity and operational resilience, the role institutionalizes structured compliance governance while avoiding bureaucratic friction. It embeds lean process optimization and continuous improvement loops to reduce operational complexity, improve turnaround times, and enhance customer experience outcomes.  
• The Intelligent Ops & Governance Lead also ensures that operational risk, fraud management, and control frameworks are forward-looking and proportionate to scale, supporting innovation without compromising trust. Through disciplined service level governance and ecosystem partner oversight, the role strengthens platform stability, operational performance, and regulatory confidence. Operating within agile ways of working, the role enables cross-functional squads by providing clear compliance thresholds, defined decision rights, and escalation protocols. It champions iterative improvement while balancing speed with regulatory and operational safeguards. 

 Thus, the Intelligent Ops & Governance Lead is strategically accountable for:  

•  Intelligent Ops Leadership: Oversees ensures end to end fintech operations run reliably, efficiently, and proactively by leveraging AI, automation, and data to drive seamless customer experiences, operational excellence, and predictive issue resolution. 
• End-to-End Fintech Operational Enablement: Oversee the integrity, scalability, and operational readiness of the full fintech portfolio, ensuring operations support growth ambitions without compromising stability or resilience.
•  Policy & Process Governance: Define and maintain clear, simplified policies and scalable process frameworks that embed control discipline while enabling efficient execution across the cluster.
• Regulatory & Operational Compliance: Establish compliance thresholds and operational guardrails that enable innovation within defined regulatory boundaries, ensuring adherence without unnecessary bureaucracy. 
• Fintech Risk & Controls Management: Lead the design and oversight of risk, fraud, and operational control frameworks that protect customer trust and business integrity at scale.
• Service Level Governance & Customer Experience Enablement: Own service performance standards across fintech touchpoints, ensuring consistent reliability, rapid issue resolution, and continuous service improvement. 
• Partner & Ecosystem Governance: Define governance and performance standards for ecosystem partners to ensure scalable, compliant, and resilient integrations across the fintech landscape. 
• Business Continuity & Operational Resilience: Ensure robust continuity and disaster recovery frameworks are in place to safeguard service stability and regulatory confidence during disruptions. 
• Continuous Improvement & Lean Optimization: Embed structured continuous improvement loops and lean process optimization principles to enhance operational efficiency and reduce friction. 
• Clear Domain Boundaries & Governance Clarity: Operate within defined decision rights where Product owns commercial decisions and Operations owns compliance thresholds, preventing overlap and friction. 
• Agile Leadership & Delivery Governance: Lead empowered cross-functional squads aligned to shared OKRs, champion iterative delivery, and balance execution speed with regulatory and operational guardrails.  
• Anchored in Safaricom’s purpose of Transforming Lives, the Intelligent Ops & Governance Lead ensures that digital financial services remain secure, resilient, and trusted, enabling individuals, merchants, and enterprises to transact confidently within a stable and compliant financial ecosystem.  

Responsibilities

Key accountabilities and decision ownership:
Intelligent Operations Leadership

• Lead end-to-end fintech operational processes across payments, credit, merchant, wallet, lending, and ecosystem products.
• Build an intelligent operations engine leveraging AI, analytics, and automation — including AI-driven anomaly detection for compliance and fraud risks in real time, and automated SLA monitoring with alert systems.
• Oversee customer experience operations, ensuring seamless, secure, and compliant customer journeys.
• Establish service excellence standards, SLAs, and operational KPIs across FS products and channels.

End-to-End Fintech Operational Enablement

• Oversee end-to-end fintech operational integrity across payments, credit, savings, insurance, and ecosystem services.
• Define operational readiness standards for new product launches and ecosystem integrations.
• Continuously assess operational bottlenecks and implement structured improvements; enable seamless coordination between Product, Growth, API, Loyalty, and Operations teams.

Regulatory & Operational Compliance

• Define compliance thresholds and operational guardrails that enable innovation within defined regulatory boundaries, without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Ensure adherence to local regulatory requirements across all fintech offerings; implement structured compliance monitoring and reporting frameworks using real-time compliance dashboards where possible.
• Provide advisory support to squads on operating within defined compliance boundaries; partner with Legal and Risk to monitor evolving regulatory expectations.

Fintech Risk & Controls Management

• Establish risk management frameworks across fraud, operational risk, and ecosystem risk; define risk appetite thresholds in collaboration with Risk and Executive leadership.
• Implement preventative and detective control mechanisms — including AI-powered fraud detection — across fintech operations.
• Monitor fraud trends and operational risk exposures across segments; ensure timely escalation of material risks within defined protocols.

Service Level Governance & Customer Experience

• Define and monitor SLAs across fintech customer journeys; ensure operational performance standards are met across digital and assisted channels.
• Track service disruptions and coordinate rapid remediation actions; deploy automated SLA monitoring and alert systems.
• Embed customer experience feedback loops into operational improvement cycles; align service standards with brand and regulatory expectations.

Partner & Ecosystem Governance

• Define onboarding, due diligence, and governance standards for fintech ecosystem partners.
• Monitor partner performance against contractual and service commitments; trigger escalation frameworks for ecosystem performance risks.
• Ensure partner integrations comply with regulatory and operational thresholds; enable ecosystem growth within clearly defined guardrails.

Business Continuity & Operational Resilience

• Develop and maintain business continuity plans across fintech services; conduct resilience testing and scenario planning for operational disruptions.
• Ensure disaster recovery protocols meet regulatory and internal standards; coordinate cross-functional response to major operational incidents.
• Monitor resilience KPIs and system recovery timelines; strengthen operational preparedness as scale and complexity increase.

Continuous Improvement & Lean Optimisation

• Embed continuous improvement loops across fintech operational domains — data-led identification of inefficiencies and friction points.
• Champion automated reconciliation, intelligent workflow tools, and process re-engineering to raise operational intelligence and reduce manual intervention.
• Track operational cost efficiency improvements; facilitate structured retrospectives following major launches or incidents.

Leadership & Talent Development

• Build and lead a high-performing, multidisciplinary team by embedding OKR-driven accountability, agile ways of working, and a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
• Ensure succession readiness for all critical roles within the function through structured coaching, mentoring, and capability development programmes.
• Champion cross-functional collaboration across M-PESA to ensure integrated, outcome-led delivery of products and initiatives.
• Model ethical leadership — reinforcing integrity, transparency, and responsible innovation in all decisions — and ensure governance and compliance in all initiatives.

Agile Leadership & Delivery Governance

• Lead empowered cross-functional squads aligned to shared OKRs, with clearly defined decision rights, accountability structures, and escalation protocols.
• Champion iterative delivery and hypothesis-driven experimentation, balancing execution speed with regulatory, risk, and operational guardrails.
• Enable transparent progress tracking through sprint reviews and performance rituals, fostering a culture of ownership and outcome-based performance.

Key performance indicators:

Availability & Reliability

• Fintech platform availability: maintain 99.95%+ availability across all customer-facing platforms; measured monthly.
• SLA compliance: achieve 95%+ SLA compliance across all key fintech customer touchpoints.

Regulatory & Risk

• Regulatory compliance: zero critical regulatory findings per annual audit cycle; all medium-risk findings remediated within 60 days of identification.
• Operational and fraud loss rate: maintain below 5% of fintech revenue; report monthly.

Resilience & Recovery

• Business continuity test success rate: achieve 100% pass rate on all scheduled DR tests; resolve any failures within 30 days.
• Operational incident resolution: achieve 95%+ of incidents resolved within defined recovery time objectives (RTO).

Partner & Ecosystem Governance

• Partner SLA adherence: maintain 95%+ partner SLA adherence; trigger escalation protocol for any partner below 90% for two consecutive months.

Efficiency & Continuous Improvement

• Operational cost-to-serve ratio: reduce by 5% year-on-year across fintech services.
• Process cycle time reduction: reduce average cycle time for priority customer and operational journeys by 50% within 12 months 
• Continuous improvement impact: deliver 5 measurable improvement initiatives per quarter with quantified efficiency or resilience gains

Must have technical / professional qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Operations Management, Risk Management, Engineering, or a related field; Master’s degree (MBA or equivalent) is an advantage.
• Minimum 10–12 years’ experience in financial services, fintech operations, payments, or regulated digital environments, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role.
• Proven experience leading end-to-end operational governance within complex, highly regulated environments.
• Strong understanding of regulatory frameworks applicable to digital financial services, including compliance, fraud prevention, and operational risk management.
• Demonstrated expertise in designing and implementing risk and control frameworks across multi-product portfolios.
• Experience establishing service level governance, resilience standards, and business continuity frameworks at scale.
• Strong operational excellence background with experience in lean process optimization and continuous improvement methodologies.
• Proven ability to enable agile ways of working while maintaining defined compliance thresholds and escalation protocols.
• Experience managing ecosystem partners and third-party operational risk within platform-based business models.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability with experience using performance data to drive operational decisions and improvements.
• Demonstrated leadership capability in building high-performing teams within matrixed, cross-functional organizations.
• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills, with the ability to balance innovation and governance in strategic decision-making.

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The role holder will:

• Define the strategy and long-term vision for next generation fintech solutions in line with Financial Services objectives
• Own end to end portfolio performance across digital savings, investments, and emerging fintech propositions
• Drive continuous product innovation and digital enablement through platform led and agile delivery models
• Champion customer centric experiences through personalization, analytics, and seamless digital journeys
• Leverage data and insights to optimize adoption, engagement, pricing, and customer lifetime value
• Ensure robust risk management, regulatory compliance, and governance across all fintech solutions
• Enable effective cross functional and ecosystem collaboration to deliver integrated outcomes
• Lead people and capability development to build high performing, future ready teams

Key accountabilities and decision ownership:

Strategy & Vision Leadership

• Define the end-to-end strategy and long-term vision for next-generation fintech solutions and insurance, aligned to Financial Services objectives.
• Translate enterprise strategy into clear, executable roadmaps — identifying new growth opportunities across digital savings, insurance, investments, and emerging fintech.
• Prioritise investments based on value, risk, and scalability, driving market leadership through differentiated propositions.

Fintech Portfolio Management

• Own end-to-end performance of the fintech portfolio — wealth (digital savings, investments, and digital assets), insurance  — including P&L, pricing, and value proposition design.
• Drive sustainable profitability and portfolio growth while monitoring adoption, usage, and customer lifetime value (CLV).
• Optimise product mix and bundling, taking corrective action on underperforming products decisively.

Product Innovation & Digital Enablement

• Lead development of next-generation, wealth, insurance and digital solutions; incubate new fintech models and platform-led propositions.
• Leverage emerging technologies to enhance customer experiences and drive rapid innovation through agile product development.
• Transition successful pilots into scalable, production-grade offerings within defined time-to-market targets.

Digital Products & Platforms Leadership

• Own the digital product roadmap and platform architecture, ensuring scalable, API-led capabilities underpin the fintech portfolio.
• Partner with Fintech Platforms Product & Innovation Lead to deliver reusable infrastructure that accelerates speed-to-market
• Embed UX excellence and reliability standards across all digital touchpoints.

Risk, Compliance & Governance

• Own the governance framework for all fintech innovations — ensuring regulatory compliance, risk controls, and audit readiness are embedded by design, not afterthought.
• Partner with the Risk, Compliance & Governance Lead to define risk appetite thresholds and manage operational, financial, and conduct risks.
• Engage proactively with regulators, balancing innovation speed with control and resilience.

Customer-Centricity & Data

• Champion customer-first design across all products; embed personalisation, segmentation, and contextual engagement.
• Leverage advanced analytics to drive decision-making — using data to optimise product performance, refine targeting, and enable predictive insights for growth.
• Partner with Data teams to scale analytical capabilities and improve customer lifetime value.

Ecosystem Partnerships

• Lead and manage the Ecosystem Partnerships function, building and governing strategic relationships with fintechs, platforms, and third-party providers.
• Enable integrated delivery across tribes and squads; resolve cross-functional dependencies.

People Leadership & Capability Development

• Lead and inspire high performing, multidisciplinary teams
• Build deep expertise in fintech, wealth, insurance and digital finance
• Develop future leaders through coaching and succession planning
• Foster a culture of innovation, agility, and ownership
• Drive performance management and accountability
• Support continuous learning and capability uplift

Agile Leadership & Delivery Governance

• Lead empowered cross-functional squads aligned to shared OKRs, with clearly defined decision rights, accountability structures, and escalation protocols.
• Champion iterative delivery and hypothesis-driven experimentation, balancing execution speed with regulatory, risk, and operational guardrails.
• Enable transparent progress tracking through sprint reviews and performance rituals, fostering a culture of ownership and outcome-based performance.

Key performance indicators:

Financial & Commercial

• Next Gen Fintech revenue growth: achieve >20% YoY growth
• Assets Under Management (AUM): grow by 15% YOY

Customer & Product

• Customer adoption and activation rate: achieve 30% monthly activation rate for digital savings and investment products, tracked by segment.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): deliver 10% uplift in CLV for active next-gen fintech customers year-on-year.
• Product penetration rate: achieve 30% penetration of key next-gen fintech products within target segments.

Delivery & Operations

• Time-to-market: deliver new propositions from approved concept to MVP within 90 days; full production within 180 days.
• Digital engagement: achieve 20% monthly active usage across next-gen fintech products.

Governance & Compliance

• Zero critical regulatory or audit findings across the fintech portfolio in any review period
• Portfolio performance and risk governance: all material risks escalated and resolved within defined SLA.

Must have technical / professional qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, Technology, or a closely related discipline from a recognized institution.
• Postgraduate qualification such as an MBA or Master’s degree in Finance, Strategy, Innovation, or Digital Transformation is strongly preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in financial services, fintech, digital banking or investment products, with exposure to large scale portfolios.
• Demonstrated senior leadership experience managing multidisciplinary teams and leading managers within complex, fast paced environments.
• Proven track record of designing, launching, and scaling digital and platform led financial solutions, ideally within ecosystem or partnership driven models.
• Solid understanding of fintech innovation, emerging technologies, and digital platforms, with the ability to translate innovation into commercial value.
• Sound knowledge of regulatory, compliance, risk, and governance frameworks applicable to fintech solutions within regulated environments
• Strong commercial and financial acumen, with experience driving growth, profitability,pricing optimization, and customer lifetime value.
• Advanced analytical and strategic thinking capabilities, with the ability to leverage data, insights, and customer analytics to inform decision making and execution

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Thus, the Lead API & Developer Marketplace is strategically accountable for:

• Platform Strategy & API Exposure Architecture: Define and evolve the organisation wide platform exposure strategy, ensuring fintech capabilities are externalized through scalable, interoperable APIs that enable ecosystem growth while aligning with the cluster roadmap.
• API Productization & Lifecycle Governance: Lead the productization of APIs as managed platform assets, establishing lifecycle standards, version governance, security protocols, and performance benchmarks that ensure reliability, scalability, and regulatory compliance.
• Developer Marketplace Growth & Ecosystem Enablement: Build and scale the Developer Marketplace by strengthening developer experience (DX), structured onboarding, documentation standards, and ecosystem engagement models that accelerate third-party adoption and platform usage.
• Monetization Governance for Platform Exposure: Establish commercial guardrails for API monetization, including usage models, pricing principles, and revenue-sharing frameworks, ensuring platform exposure
• Anchored in Safaricom’s purpose of transforming lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities, and people to information, the Lead API & Developer Marketplace ensures that Financial Services evolves from product-centric offerings to a scalable, ecosystem-powered platform that expands access, innovation, and sustainable revenue growth.contributes sustainably to revenue growth and EBITDA targets without duplicating Product monetization ownership.
• Agile API Squads & DevSecOps Alignment: Align API squads with agile delivery principles and DevSecOps standards to ensure secure, high-performance, continuously deployable APIs that balance innovation speed with platform stability and risk management.
• Agile Leadership & Delivery Governance: Leads empowered cross-functional squads aligned to shared OKRs, operating within clearly defined decision rights and escalation protocols. Champions iterative delivery and hypothesis-driven experimentation while balancing speed with regulatory, financial, and operational guardrails to ensure responsible, outcome-led execution.

Key accountabilities and decision ownership:

Platform Strategy & API Exposure Architecture

• Define and maintain the Safaricom and Financial Services API exposure strategy aligned to cluster growth and platform ambitions.
• Translate fintech roadmap priorities into scalable exposure architectures that enable ecosystem integration across payments, credit, wealth, insurance, and partner ecosystems.
• Establish scalability, interoperability, and security standards that support high transaction volumes and cross-border expansion.
• Partner with Product to ensure capabilities are platform-ready from inception — without assuming ownership of product functionality.
• Align exposure standards with regulatory, security, and risk requirements across all API surfaces.

API Productisation & Lifecycle Governance

• Productise APIs as managed platform assets with defined lifecycle stages, version control, deprecation policies, and backward compatibility standards.
• Define performance benchmarks and reliability thresholds for all exposed services; embed security-by-design and compliance-by-design across API development.
• Ensure documentation, testing, sandbox environments, and support models meet enterprise-grade standards.
• Govern API portfolio rationalisation: eliminate duplication, retire deprecated APIs, and optimise platform efficiency.

Developer Marketplace Growth & Ecosystem Enablement

• Build and scale the Developer Marketplace as a structured ecosystem growth engine — strengthening developer experience (DX) through intuitive onboarding, self-service documentation, and structured support frameworks.
• Define clear value propositions and use cases for third-party developers, enterprises, and ecosystem integrators.
• Monitor ecosystem adoption metrics (active integrations, API call volumes, developer activation rates) and identify levers to accelerate usage.
• Establish structured feedback loops to continuously improve developer engagement and marketplace performance.

Monetisation Governance for Platform Exposure

• Define API monetisation principles aligned to revenue and EBITDA objectives — establishing pricing guardrails and usage models for API consumption.
• Ensure revenue-sharing and partnership structures are economically viable and margin-protective; track API monetisation performance against defined financial targets.
• Enable controlled commercial experimentation within approved boundaries; align monetisation frameworks with Product and Commercial teams to prevent overlap or duplication.

Agile API Squads & DevSecOps Alignment

• Align API squads to agile delivery principles, enabling rapid iteration and continuous improvement.
• Embed DevSecOps practices to ensure secure, reliable, and scalable API deployments; ensure platform stability while supporting innovation velocity.
• Monitor service uptime, reliability, and incident response standards; coordinate cross-functional collaboration between API squads, Product, and Technology teams.
• Promote automation and continuous integration practices that enhance deployment speed and resilience.

Leadership & Talent Development

• Build and lead a high-performing, multidisciplinary team embedding OKR-driven accountability, agile ways of working, and a culture of continuous learning and innovation.
• Ensure succession readiness for all critical roles through structured coaching, mentoring, and capability development programmes.
• Champion cross-functional collaboration across M-PESA to ensure integrated, outcome-led delivery of products and initiatives.
• Model ethical leadership — reinforcing integrity, transparency, and responsible innovation — and ensure governance and compliance in all initiatives.

Agile Leadership & Delivery Governance

• Lead empowered cross-functional squads aligned to shared OKRs, with clearly defined decision rights, accountability structures, and escalation protocols.
• Champion iterative delivery and hypothesis-driven experimentation, balancing execution speed with regulatory, risk, and operational guardrails.
• Enable transparent progress tracking through sprint reviews and performance rituals, fostering a culture of ownership and outcome-based performance.

Key performance indicators:

Revenue & Monetisation

• API-driven revenue contribution: grow to at least 5% of total FS revenue .
• Developer marketplace revenue growth: achieve > 10% YoY growth.
• API monetisation yield per integration: achieve average acceptable yield per active third-party integration monthly.

Ecosystem Growth

• Active API integrations: achieve 10,000+ active enterprise and third-party integrations.
• API usage growth rate: achieve 15% YoY growth in total API call/transaction volume.
• Ecosystem partner activation and retention rate: achieve 80%+ 90-day partner retention.
• Average time to onboard new developers or partners: reduce to 48 hours.

Platform Performance & Quality

• API platform uptime: maintain 99%+ availability across all production API surfaces.
• Mean time to resolve (MTTR) API incidents: achieve below 2 hours for P1/P2 incidents.
• Percentage of new fintech products that are API-enabled at launch
• API security compliance: zero critical security vulnerabilities in production; all findings remediated within defined SLA.

Must have technical / professional qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business, or a related field.
• Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA), Technology Management, Digital Platforms, or related discipline is advantageous.
• Minimum 10–12 years’ experience in digital platforms, APIs, fintech, product management, or ecosystem strategy within large-scale, technology-driven organizations.
• Proven experience leading API strategy, platform exposure, or developer ecosystem initiatives at enterprise scale.
• Strong understanding of API productization, platform monetization models, and digital ecosystem economics.
• Demonstrated experience working within agile delivery environments and aligning API squads with DevSecOps practices.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native architectures, microservices environments, and scalable platform design principles (without requiring deep engineering specialization).
• Experience managing platform reliability, security, compliance, and performance standards in regulated financial or technology environments.
• Track record of building and scaling developer marketplaces, partner ecosystems, or B2B platform adoption programs.
• Strong commercial acumen with the ability to link API exposure strategy to revenue growth, monetization governance, and EBITDA impact.
• Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders across Product, Technology, Growth, and Commercial teams.
• Strong executive communication capability with the ability to translate technical concepts into strategic business outcomes.