Technical Project Manager

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

1. Drive the day-to-day technical delivery of the Core Wallet and Core Banking Transformation program across one or more workstreams (Technical Build & Integration, Data Migration, Distribution, Operations, or others as assigned), under the direction of the Programme Director.

2. Own the integrated technical plan, dependencies, RAID, ceremonies, and reporting for assigned workstreams — translating the Programme Director's roadmap into executable sprints, milestones, and deliverables.

3. Coordinate Core Platform Supplier, third-party vendors, D&F Tech, and OPCO technology teams on a daily basis to unblock issues, manage dependencies, and keep the program on plan, on budget, and on quality.

4. Provide the Programme Director with clear, structured, evidence-based reporting on progress, risks, issues, and decisions required — and surface escalations early enough to be acted on.

MAIN FUNCTIONS – RESPONSIBILITIES & ACTIVITIES

Technical planning & execution

• Build and maintain the detailed technical project plan for assigned workstreams; integrate it into the overall program plan owned by the Programme Director.

• Decompose the Programme Director's roadmap into sprints, milestones, deliverables, and acceptance criteria with clear owners and dates.

• Track progress against plan; spot slippage early; replan proactively with the Programme Director when needed.

• Run sprint planning, daily stand-ups, demos, retrospectives, and other delivery ceremonies for assigned squads.

• Maintain a single, accurate, up-to-date view of status, scope, schedule, and budget.

Dependency, RAID & change management

• Identify, document, and actively manage dependencies within the workstream and across other workstreams (Product, Compliance, Data, Distribution, Operations, Customer Care).

• Maintain Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies (RAID) logs; drive mitigation actions to closure.

• Run change control for the workstream — assess impact (scope, time, cost, quality), recommend decisions, and route through program governance.

• Escalate blockers and material risks to the Programme Director with clear options and recommendations, not just problems.

Vendor & cross-team coordination

• Coordinate Core Wallet delivery teams and third-party vendors on a daily basis — track SOW deliverables, milestones, and SLA adherence.

• Align D&F Tech, Architecture, Security, OPCO technology, and BU teams on shared deliverables and integration points.

• Chair working groups; ensure decisions are documented, owners assigned, and follow-through happens.

• Hold vendors and internal teams accountable to commitments without losing the working relationship.

Testing, quality & technical readiness

• Plan and orchestrate SIT, UAT, performance, and security testing cycles in coordination with QA, vendors, and BU teams.

• Track defects, drive triage, prioritization, and closure against agreed quality gates.

• Ensure environments, test data, and access are in place ahead of each test cycle.

• Validate technical readiness for go-live: cutover plans, rollback plans, runbooks, monitoring, and on-call coverage.

• Coordinate dry runs and rehearsals; chase down every open item before cutover.

Governance, reporting & documentation

• Produce weekly / fortnightly workstream status reports for the Programme Director and program governance forums.

• Maintain accurate project artefacts: plans, RAID logs, decision logs, action logs, meeting minutes, and change records.

• Contribute to Steering Committee packs with clear data, options, and recommendations.

• Ensure traceability between requirements, designs, build, test results, and deployment.

Budget, resource & operational discipline

• Track workstream budget consumption against forecast; flag variances early.

• Manage resource onboarding, allocation, and offboarding across the workstream — internal staff, contractors, and vendor resources.

• Drive operational discipline in tooling: JIRA hygiene, Confluence documentation, SharePoint structure, and reporting cadence.

• Capture lessons learned at each phase and feed them into subsequent OPCO rollouts.

LEVEL OF EDUCATION:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, Telecommunications or equivalent. PMP, PRINCE2, Scrum Master (CSM / PSM), or SAFe certifications are strongly preferred.

LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE:

• Minimum 10 years of project / delivery management experience in technology, with at least 3 years in fintech, mobile money, digital banking, or telecom.
• Hands-on technical delivery experience on core wallet, core banking, or payments platforms
• Proven track record running technical workstreams within larger transformation programs, including integration delivery and data migration.
• Experience managing tier-1 vendor delivery teams alongside third-party integrators.
• Experience in African markets is preferred; experience in multi-country delivery is an advantage.
• Strong working knowledge of Agile (Scrum / Kanban), Waterfall, and hybrid delivery models; comfortable picking the right approach for the context.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS REQUIRED:

• Highly organized; relentless on follow-through and closure.
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to produce crisp, executive-ready status reports.
• Comfortable holding engineers, architects, and vendors to account without damaging working relationships.
• Pragmatic problem-solver; reaches for the simplest solution that works.
• Calm under pressure during cutovers, incidents, and escalations.
• Comfortable working with diverse, multicultural, multilingual teams across Africa.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Sufficient technical literacy to read architecture and integration designs, challenge estimates, and understand the technical trade-offs being made.
• Strong command of project management tooling (JIRA, Confluence, MS Project / Smartsheet) and reporting tools (Excel, Power BI).
• Working knowledge of the pan-African fintech / mobile money ecosystem (regulation, MNO partnerships, agent economics) is a plus.
• High availability and geographical mobility — periodic travel across AFS OPCOs is expected, particularly around go-live windows.

English required; French is a strong advantage given AFS footprint.