Head – Digital Engineering & Innovation

Role Purpose

The Head of Digital Engineering & Innovation is responsible for driving the Company's digital transformation agenda through world-class engineering leadership, architectural governance, product excellence, and strategic innovation. This role provides enterprise-level oversight of all digital platforms, ensures technical delivery quality across squads, manages key technology partners, and leads the Engineering Chapter to build a high-performing and scalable digital Company. The role holder will be responsible for setting the department's technical direction and governing architecture, ensuring engineering excellence, and enabling the squads to deliver secure, resilient, scalable, and future-ready digital solutions.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Alignment

• Partner with the PMO, Business Leads, Group Business Technology Teams and CEO to define, align, and continuously update the Digital Engineering roadmap
• Translate organisational strategy into engineering execution plans, ensuring timelines, dependencies, and risks are well-managed
• Provide thought leadership on emerging technologies and market shifts across digital financial services, platform engineering, and customer journeys
• Lead quarterly strategic planning and prioritization sessions with PMO and Business Owners

Strategic Innovation & Partnerships

• Lead discovery and negotiation of innovative partnerships targeting Retail, Mass Affluent, and Base-of-the-Pyramid segments
• Identify and evaluate Fintechs, mobile money ecosystems, USSD aggregators, and API-driven platforms
• Drive experimentation with new technologies including AI/ML, digital onboarding, RPA, microservices, cloud-native systems, and API integrations
• Develop proof-of-concepts (PoCs) to test emerging capabilities and scale those with proven impact
• Foster a culture of innovation within engineering squads

Architecture Oversight, Assurance & Governance