Job Description

Standard Bank Group is a leading Africa-focused financial services group, and an innovative player on the global stage, that offers a variety of career-enhancing opportunities – plus the chance to work alongside some of the sector’s most talented, motivated professionals. Our clients range from individuals, to businesses of all sizes, high net worth families and large multinational corporates and institutions. We’re passionate about creating growth in Africa. Bringing true, meaningful value to our clients and the communities we serve and creating a real sense of purpose for you.

The Production Support Engineer serves as the primary technical authority for the organization's hybrid integration landscape, encompassing IBM MQ, DataPower, API Gateway, and the broader CP4I platform on OpenShift.

To build, maintain, and sustain a resilient, high-performance hybrid integration landscape (IBM MQ, DataPower, API Gateway, and CP4I on OpenShift) by shifting the operational paradigm from reactive firefighting to proactive reliability. This is achieved through the rapid restoration of critical services within strict SLAs, the permanent elimination of root causes via rigorous RCA and defect remediation, and the systematic automation of operational workflows to reduce toil.

Qualifications

Type of Qualification: First Degree
Field of Study: Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.

Any of the below professional/Technical Certifications (Preferred)

• • IBM Cloud Pak for Integration (CP4I) Administration
  • API Gateway certifications (e.g., IBM API Connect Certified Administrator, Apigee Certified Engineer, or AWS Certified API Developer)
  • IBM Certified Solution Developer – IBM MQ or IBM DataPower Gateway
  • IBM Certified Administrator – IBM MQ or IBM DataPower Gateway
  • DevOps-related certifications (e.g., Docker Certified Associate, Jenkins Engineer, or HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate)
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
  • Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration (EX280) or Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)

Experience Required

3-4 years

• Middleware & Integration Platforms: Hands-on experience administering and supporting IBM MQ and IBM DataPower Gateway in high-volume production environments.
• API Management: Proven experience managing and troubleshooting API Gateways (IBM API Connect, Apigee, or equivalent), including policy configuration, security enforcement (OAuth, JWT, mTLS), rate limiting, and developer portal administration.
• Cloud Pak for Integration (CP4I): Hands-on experience administering and supporting IBM Cloud Pak for Integration components, including platform installation, lifecycle management, and integration with underlying OpenShift infrastructure.
• Production Support: Proven track record of providing 24/7 on-call production support for mission-critical integration platforms, with demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve incidents under pressure within stringent SLAs
• CI/CD Pipelines: Hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, or equivalent) for automated deployment of integration assets and platform configurations.
• Root Cause Analysis: Experience conducting formal Root Cause Analyses (RCAs) for major incidents, including documenting technical findings, collaborating with development teams on code fixes, and tracking remediation to closure.
• Change & Release Management: Demonstrated experience executing complex zero-downtime deployments, firmware upgrades, and emergency hotfixes in production environments, including thorough pre- and post-validation and rollback planning.
• Performance Tuning: Demonstrated experience conducting capacity planning, performance benchmarking, and tuning of middleware and API platforms to optimize throughput, latency, and resource utilization.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Strong experience collaborating with development, infrastructure, networking, and security teams to drive end-to-end incident resolution and platform improvements.
• Disaster Recovery (DR): Proven experience designing, testing, and executing DR and failover drills to validate RTO/RPO targets.

Additional Information

Behavioural Competencies:

• Checking Things
• Documenting Facts
• Embracing Change
• Managing Tasks
• Taking Action
• Team Working
• Upholding Standards

Technical Competencies:

• Application Support
• Availability Management
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning
• Continuous Deployment
• Database Administration
• Network Security Monitoring
• Project Management (Project Mgmt)
• Stakeholder Management
• Testing (unit, regression, integration)
• Trouble Shooting