Job Classification

Platform owner - Postilion 147441

Closing date - 31 August 2026

Job Family

Information Technology

Career Stream

IT Operations

Leadership Pipeline

Manage Self: Technical

Job Purpose

The Platform Owner is accountable for the end-to-end ownership, strategic direction, operational resilience, and sustainability of the Postilion ecosystem and associated card payment platforms. This includes ensuring the platform delivers measurable business value while remaining secure, scalable, compliant, highly available, and cost effective.

The role acts as the primary technology owner for the Postilion landscape, including transaction switching, acquiring, issuing, ATM, POS, eCommerce, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, and scheme integrations. The Platform Owner balances business demand, technology evolution, operational stability, regulatory compliance, vendor management, and financial stewardship across a high-volume transaction processing environment.

The role works closely with Product Owners, Architects, Engineering, Operations, Card Business, Risk, Finance, Card Schemes, PSPs, FinTech partners, and ACI Worldwide to ensure the platform supports current and future business strategies.

Job Responsibilities

Platform Strategy & Ownership

• Define and maintain the Postilion platform vision, roadmap, and target architecture aligned to business and technology strategy.
• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of the Postilion ecosystem, including upgrades, modernization, scheme mandates, certifications, and lifecycle management.
• Drive strategic evolution of Postilion Realtime, PostBridge, Postilion Office, settlement, reconciliation, and integration components.
• Ensure the platform remains scalable, resilient, secure, and reusable across acquiring, issuing, ATM, merchant, and digital payment channels.
• Identify opportunities to improve transaction processing efficiency, customer experience, operational effectiveness, and platform reliability.
• Ensure readiness for emerging payment technologies, digital channels, and card scheme requirements.

Governance & Accountability

• Establish and enforce platform standards, architectural guardrails, and non-functional requirements covering performance, resilience, recoverability, and security.
• Ensure compliance with Visa, Mastercard, PCI-DSS, EMV, BankservAfrica, and applicable regulatory requirements.
• Maintain accountability for platform governance, operational risk management, audit readiness, and remediation of identified findings.
• Ensure effective governance of transaction routing, settlement integrity, balancing controls, reconciliation processes, and cryptographic key management.
• Oversee delivery of card scheme mandates, certification requirements, and regulatory changes.

Delivery & Execution

• Translate business demand into platform capabilities and technology outcomes in partnership with Product Owners and Engineering teams.
• Prioritize platform investment across business initiatives, technical debt reduction, modernization, resilience improvements, and regulatory obligations.
• Lead delivery across multiple teams supporting acquiring, issuing, ATM, merchant, and digital payment services.
• Oversee major platform upgrades, migrations, infrastructure refreshes, and strategic transformation initiatives.
• Coordinate certification and implementation activities with schemes, processors, PSPs, merchants, and third-party providers.

Operational Excellence

• Accountable for platform stability, transaction processing performance, service availability, and operational resilience.
• Ensure effective monitoring and management of authorization performance, transaction throughput, settlement processing, and reconciliation activities.
• Lead major incident resolution, problem management, root cause analysis, and remediation activities.
• Ensure robust business continuity, disaster recovery, and capacity planning capabilities.
• Drive continuous improvement through automation, monitoring, and operational maturity initiatives.

Job Responsibilities Continue

Vendor Management

• Manage vendor contracts, software licensing, maintenance agreements, renewals, and commercial negotiations.
• Lead operational and executive governance forums with ACI to review service delivery, support performance, roadmap alignment, and strategic initiatives.
• Monitor vendor performance against SLAs, support commitments, and contractual obligations.
• Drive escalations and resolution of major incidents, software defects, and strategic initiatives requiring vendor involvement.
• Evaluate vendor roadmaps and identify opportunities for platform improvement, cost optimization, and modernization.
• Coordinate vendor resources during platform upgrades, certifications, major incidents, and transformation programmes.

Stakeholder Management & Leadership

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior business and technology stakeholders.
• Communicate platform strategy, operational risk, vendor performance, and investment priorities to governance forums.
• Build strong relationships with card schemes, payment processors, regulators, PSPs, FinTechs, and strategic vendors.
• Mentor and develop teams to build and sustain Postilion and payments domain expertise.
• Promote a culture of accountability, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.

Essential Qualifications - NQF Level

Preferred Qualification

IT Related Degree or Diploma

Minimum Experience Level

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related discipline.
• 10+ years' experience in payments and card technology environments.
• 8+ years' experience in platform ownership, payment systems leadership, or large-scale transaction processing environments.
• Expert knowledge of Postilion Realtime, PostBridge, Postilion Office, settlement, reconciliation, and transaction switching capabilities.
• Extensive experience in acquiring, issuing, ATM, POS, eCommerce, authorization, clearing, settlement, and reconciliation processes.
• Strong understanding of ISO8583 messaging and payment processing architectures.
• Proven experience managing high-volume, mission-critical transaction processing platforms.
• Experience managing strategic vendor relationships, including ACI Worldwide or equivalent payment technology providers.
• Strong knowledge of Visa, Mastercard, EMV, PCI-DSS, and card scheme compliance requirements.
• Experience leading platform modernization and payment transformation initiatives.

Key Skills & Competencies

• Deep Postilion and card payments domain expertise.
• Strategic platform ownership and roadmap management.
• Strong vendor governance and commercial management capability.
• Knowledge of card scheme operations and compliance requirements.
• Payment platform architecture and modernization leadership.
• Financial and commercial acumen.
• Executive stakeholder management and communication.
• Incident management and operational resilience leadership.
• Strong governance and accountability mindset.
• High levels of ownership, resilience, and accountability in complex, high-impact environments.

Technical / Professional Knowledge

Behavioural Competencies