Job title Unit Head, Digital Systems Support
Function Technology Operations – Digital Systems Support
Job Level/Grade 4B
Report to (1) Head, Technology Products & Operations
JOB PURPOSE
Lead the Bank’s run-the-bank operational support for the Digital & Mobile ecosystem—USSD, Mobile App, and Agency Banking integrations—with end-to-end responsibility for the backend platform stability, incident response, change coordination, and service quality across on-prem and cloud environments.
The role provides a full spectrum of professional and technical support to internal and external customers: onboarding and customer setups, timely resolution of issues, proactive monitoring of product usage and system health, and clear communication throughout. It partners closely with Applications, Networks, Security, DBAs, and Vendors to restore service quickly, prevent recurrence, and keep platforms safe, reliable, and auditable.
The unit also supports audits and examinations, maintains accurate operational documentation and reports, and delivers targeted training to Bank personnel on features, operational procedures, and support best practices. As a core member of the Run-the-Bank function, this role positively influences overall IT service delivery by enforcing disciplined operations, maintaining 24×7 readiness, and turning operational insights into continuous improvement for our customers and channels.
PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES
• Production Ownership (Run-the-Bank): Steward live environments for USSD, Mobile App backends, and Agency integrations across OCI OKE/AWS EKS, WebLogic/Java/PHP services, API gateway/ESB, and channel interfaces; ensure monitoring, alerting, housekeeping, and on-call readiness.
• Incident & Problem Management: Lead P1/P2 bridges end-to-end (triage, comms, vendor escalation, restoration). Drive RCAs and preventive actions; convert learnings into runbooks and knowledge articles.
• Change & Release Coordination: Plan and execute maintenance windows and releases (blue/green/canary where applicable), perform pre/post checks, validate rollbacks, and protect SLAs during upgrades and patches.
• Service Monitoring & Observability: Operate dashboards, alarms, and synthetics using OCI Monitoring/Logging/Alarms and AWS CloudWatch/CloudTrail; integrate APM/trace tools (e.g., Dynatrace/New Relic/Splunk/Prometheus/Grafana/ELK).
• Integrations Support (Agency/Telco/Fintech): Own day-to-day technical support for partner interfaces—timeouts, version upgrades, cert/key renewals, IP whitelisting, throttling/quotas—and keep interface documentation current.
• Capacity, Performance & Housekeeping: Track utilization, queues, and latencies; coordinate scale-up/scale-out with platform teams; schedule routine housekeeping (log rotation, cache hygiene, certificate/secret rotation).
• Access & Environment Hygiene: Enforce least-privilege access, credential/secret hygiene (OCI Vault/AWS KMS), configuration baselines, and environment separation.
• Cross-Team Coordination: Work with DBA, Network, Security, Applications, and Vendors to resolve issues; raise well-formed tickets/CRs and ensure timely, evidenced closure.
• Operational Documentation: Maintain up-to-date SOPs, runbooks, topology diagrams, interface registers, DR playbooks; keep CMDB/asset records and ticketing (e.g., Remedy/ServiceNow) accurate.
• Team Leadership & Shift Governance: Lead the support/DevOps team (rota, coaching, handovers); ensure consistent call-outs, comms, and post-incident reviews.
Professional Development
• Role-relevant upskilling: Pursues targeted learning in OCI (OKE, IAM, Networking, Monitoring/Logging, Vault), AWS (EKS, IAM, VPC, CloudWatch/CloudTrail), WebLogic/Java troubleshooting, Bash automation, API gateways/ESB, and observability tools.
• Certifications: ITIL Foundation; OCI Associate/Professional; AWS Associate/Professional; Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD).
• Operational drills & readiness: Runs and participates in incident simulations, DR failover exercises, change dry-runs, and game-days; incorporates lessons into runbooks and SOPs.
• Cross-functional breadth: Cross-trains with Applications, Network, Security, and DBA teams to improve triage efficiency, change coordination, and service restoration.
• Process improvement mindset: Identifies tooling and workflow gaps (alerts, dashboards, scripts, CI steps) and partners with DevOps/Engineering to automate repetitive tasks and reduce recovery time.
• Professional conduct: Models calm, clear communication under pressure; mentors junior staff on on-call etiquette, handovers, and customer-centric support practices.
Communication Skills
• Executive presentation skills: Delivers engaging, well-structured presentations and dashboards that translate operational risk and performance into business outcomes and options.
• Tact and discretion: Handles sensitive topics (customer impact, control gaps, vendor issues) with professionalism; escalates appropriately while preserving trust.
• Stakeholder alignment: Builds shared understanding across Applications, Network, Security, DBA, Vendors, and Business; negotiates realistic ETAs and communicates dependencies and risks.
• Customer-centric messaging: Crafts user-facing incident and maintenance communications that set expectations, minimize confusion, and guide next actions.
• Data-driven visuals: Uses charts and dashboards (availability, latency, error rates, queues) to explain trends, support decisions, and prioritize improvements.
• Listening & feedback loops: Practices active listening; captures feedback from branches/agents/call-center and feeds insights into problem records, knowledge articles, and training.
• Global/remote collaboration: Coordinates across time zones and cultures; maintains reliable written records in ticketing and collaboration tools to ensure seamless 24×7 handovers.
• Coaching & mentorship: Models calm, clear communication under pressure; mentors staff on incident etiquette, concise updates, and stakeholder management.
Technical Understanding
• Languages & Scripting: Java awareness for log/stack analysis and thread/connection pool basics; Bash for operational automation; SQL/PLSQL for diagnostics and read-only queries.
• Cloud & Platform: OCI (OKE, IAM/Policies/Dynamic Groups, VCN, NSGs/Security Lists, Load Balancer, Object Storage, Bastion, Logging/Monitoring/Alarms, Vault, OCIR); AWS (EKS, IAM, VPC, ALB/NLB, SSM, ECR, CloudWatch/CloudTrail).
• Channels & Middleware: USSD session flows, Mobile App backend services (auth, sessions, notifications), Agency device/integration patterns; WebLogic/Java/PHP, API Gateway/ESB, Linux, Docker, NGINX/HAProxy, Redis/cache.
• DevOps & Tooling: Git/GitHub, Jenkins/GitLab CI/Azure DevOps; IaC (Terraform/Ansible); ticketing (Remedy/ServiceNow); observability (Prometheus/Grafana/ELK or Dynatrace/New Relic/Splunk).
• Networks & Security (Ops level): TCP/IP, DNS, routing, firewalls, TLS/mTLS basics; certificates/PKI, OAuth2/OIDC concepts; API quotas/rate-limiting; secrets rotation; endpoint hardening and patch orchestration.
Organisational Compliance
• Ensure adherence to correct identification procedures and confidentiality of information that conform to the requirements of the Ecobank when accessing customer details.
• Ensure sound operational knowledge of Financial regulatory requirements including (but not limited to), Financial Services Act.
JOB SKILLS/EXPERIENCE
• Operational Case & Request Management: Expert at managing incidents, service requests, and minor enhancements in enterprise ticketing, ensuring accurate categorization, prioritization, SLA adherence, and clear customer updates from intake to closure.
• Major Incident Leadership (P1/P2): Leads bridges end-to-end—rapid triage, comms, vendor/SI escalation, workaround/rollback—and publishes crisp post-incident summaries with preventive follow-ups embedded into runbooks.
• Root Cause & Problem Management: Performs log/metric/trace analysis (WebLogic/Java stacks, API gateways, ESB, microservices) to isolate recurring faults; raises problem records, drives corrective actions, and verifies effectiveness through targeted monitoring.
• Change, Release & Maintenance Windows: Coordinates deployments, hotfixes, and platform patches; executes pre/post checks, health validations, and rollback drills; supports progressive delivery (blue/green, canary) where applicable.
• Service Monitoring & Observability: Operates dashboards and alarms with OCI Monitoring/Logging/Alarms and AWS CloudWatch/CloudTrail; uses APM/log stacks (Prometheus/Grafana/ELK, Dynatrace/New Relic/Splunk) for early detection, capacity planning, and faster MTTR.
• Digital Channels Knowledge: Hands-on support for USSD session flows (short-code routing, menu latency/timeout tuning), Mobile App back-end services (auth, session, notifications), and Agency Banking device/integration workflows in production.
• Integration & API Support: Day-to-day ownership of partner/telco/fintech interfaces—API keys/cert renewals, IP allow-lists, throttling/quotas, schema/version change coordination, and contract-test execution to reduce integration defects.
• Platform & Middleware Operations: Practical administration and troubleshooting of WebLogic/Java/PHP services, API gateways/ESB, Linux services, containers (Kubernetes on OCI OKE and AWS EKS), NGINX/HAProxy, and Redis/cache layers.
• Scripting & Automation (Ops): Bash scripting for routine operations (log rotation, checks, backups, housekeeping), incident data collection, and post-deploy validations; contributes to CI job steps with the DevOps team.
• SQL/PLSQL for Diagnostics: Competent with SQL queries, plan/latency observation, and basic tuning suggestions for Oracle/MySQL/PostgreSQL; coordinates with DBA teams for schema/index/replication and recovery tasks.
• Network & Security Fundamentals: Solid grasp of TCP/IP, DNS, routing, firewalls, TLS/mTLS, OAuth2/OIDC flows, WAF/rate-limiting, secrets and certificate rotation (OCI Vault, AWS KMS/ACM), and least-privilege access via OCI IAM Policies/Dynamic Groups and AWS IAM.
• Capacity, Performance & Housekeeping: Monitors utilization, thread/connection pools, JVM GC behavior, queue depths, and API latency; plans scale-up/scale-out with platform teams; schedules certificate/secret renewals and general platform hygiene.
• Documentation & Knowledge Base: Maintains accurate SOPs, runbooks, interface registers, topology diagrams, DR playbooks, and RCA libraries; ensures ticket histories are complete, auditable, and easy for on-call use.
• Stakeholder & Vendor Engagement: Coordinates with DBAs, Networks, Security, Apps, and external vendors/MSPs for timely resolution; negotiates realistic ETAs and ensures evidence-based closure of actions.
• Communication & Customer Handling: Communicates clearly with technical and non-technical audiences; sets expectations, delivers status/impact statements, and explains resolutions and next steps in plain language.
• Team Leadership & Shift Governance: Leads a production support/DevOps team (rota, handovers, coaching); promotes blameless reviews, skills rotation, and operational excellence across 24×7 coverage.
• Professionalism Under Pressure: Remains calm and structured during escalations; makes sound operational decisions with risk awareness; balances urgency with control discipline.
• Working Pattern: Comfortable with planned after-hours work, on-call participation, weekend/holiday releases, and DR exercises in a regulated financial environment.
Experience & Qualifications
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a closely related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 7–10+ years in production operations/support for digital channels (USSD, Mobile App, Agency Banking)
• 3+ years leading teams/on-call governance (shift rotas, incident bridges, change windows).
• Hands-on with WebLogic/Java/PHP services, Linux, Kubernetes (OCI OKE / AWS EKS), API Gateway/ESB, NGINX/HAProxy, and Redis/cache.
• Proficiency with CI/CD & GitOps practices and toolchains (e.g., Jenkins/GitLab CI/Azure DevOps; artifact registries OCIR/ECR).
• Bash scripting for operational automation; SQL/PLSQL (read-only diagnostics) for Oracle/MySQL/PostgreSQL (not a DBA function).
• Solid grasp of ITIL Incident/Problem/Change, maintenance windows, and DR/BCP execution.
• Working knowledge of network & security in hybrid cloud: VCN/VPC, routing, firewalls, TLS/mTLS, OAuth2/OIDC, certificates/PKI, OCI Vault/AWS KMS, and secrets rotation.
• Demonstrated ability to produce clear RCAs, change notices, runbooks, and stakeholder communications under pressure.
“Ecobank is committed to providing equal opportunities to all and fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. To this end, we encourage applications from individuals regardless of their nationality, race, gender, age, social class, religion, beliefs, and disability while fully adhering to the local laws and regulations established where Ecobank operates.”
