Job Title

The role overview The Head of IT GSM Service Delivery will be responsible for leading the operations, maintenance, and continuous improvement of IT Telco applications. This role ensures high availability, resilience, reliability, scalability, performance, and security of IT applications, supporting customer-facing and internal business processes. This role requires strategic leadership, technical expertise, and a strong focus on service delivery and operational excellence and will cover the Airtel Pan Africa. The role will be the highest escalation point for all the Telco IT applications, will require managing multiple partners and stakeholders and ensuring 24x7 effective operations. Key responsibilities: Architect and plan the operational strategies for GSM IT Applications Lead and direct the design of short term and long-term IT Operations strategy for Airtel Africa towards building a culture of operational excellence and optimizing operational cost. Actively contributes to the overall management of the IT operations initiatives - understand the overall picture of the business, provide strategic inputs and align the activities /decisions on a tactical basis. Be the custodiam of the approved AOP, Financial Budgets, Manpower Plan for IT Apps Operations. Establish guidelines and control measures to ensure compliance to Government regulations while implementing & managing IT Operations. (E.g. Data Centre lifecycle management) Application Operations & Management: Oversee the end-to-end operations of Telco IT applications, including CRM, Billing, OSS/BSS, ERP, VAS, CCT and customer self-service platforms. Manage, optimize, and troubleshoot mission-critical IT platform, ensuring seamless operations. Incident & Problem Management: Lead troubleshooting efforts, root cause analysis, and incident resolution for application-related issues. Lead incident response for escalated issues across GSM and interdependent applications, networks, middleware, databases, OS/VMware, and storage systems Proactively identifies customer issues & ensures timely resolution, looks at areas for service improvement. Monitoring, Automation & Reporting: Ensure the effective deployment and utilization of monitoring and automation tools such as Grafana, Nagios, Foglight, Jenkins, Prometheus, etc. and accuracy the generated alerts and KPIS. Implement automation best practices for proactive issue prevention and operational efficiency Service Delivery & SLAs: Ensure compliance with SLAs for application uptime, performance, and user experience. Change & Release Management: Govern the deployment of updates, patches, and new features with minimal service disruption. Ensuring GSM Operational policies are followed during day-to-day operations of all services, products and applications with the clear maker check controls Security & Compliance: Ensure applications adhere to industry regulations, cybersecurity best practices, and data protection policies. Partners & Stakeholders Management: Manage third-party vendors, service providers, and outsourcing partners to optimize operational efficiency. Regular business & external partners engagement to improve operational efficiency. Collaborate with business units, network teams, and IT development teams to align applications with business needs. Continuous Improvement: Identify opportunities for automation, process optimization, and efficiency improvements. Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity: Define and implement DR strategies for critical applications SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE State the minimum acceptable proficiency for this job . Do not state incumbent-specific information Key Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent experience). Professional qualification/Certifications in IT skills like ITIL, Cloud, Java, Microservices, Oracle/PostGreSQL data base, Linux, etc 10+ years of experience in IT Operations – with core telecom prior skills Preferred Skills Master’s degree in a related field. Strong technical hands on & troubleshooting skills across IT technology & domains such as: BSS, OSS, Enterprise COTS Applications of GSM like Billing, Mediation, Interconnect, Provisioning, Campaign Management, Sales and Distribution, IT VAS, USSD, SMSC, SMS Gateway, Bulk Messaging, Cisco CCT, VMWare and Unix based K8s clusters, Private cloud, Familiarity & deep hands on with CI/CD pipelines & tools - GitOps practices, Jenkins ec Very hands on tech skills on Container Orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, Rancher, OpenShift. Very strong hands-on technical skills and operations of managing distributed database systems (e.g. PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Maria, Oracle, MSSQL etc, Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog). Key Soft Skills and Competencies Strategic thinking and ability to align operational goals with business objectives. Ability to manage high pressure during critical incidents and manage multiple priorities. Very strong communication and collaborative skills, with mindset focus on building strong cross-functional relationships. Detail-oriented approach to documentation and process standardization Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities Strong organizational and time management skills.