Chief Technology Officer & Group Technology Platform Head - CESA 2 (Francophone)

GENERAL JOB INFORMATION

Job Title: Chief Technology Officer & Group Technology Platform Head - CESA 2 (Francophone)
Reports to: Group Chief Technology and Information Officer (GCTIO)/Regional Executive & Country MD
Direct Reports: Country Technology Heads
Matrix Reports: Platform Tribe (Product Owners, Tech Leads, Developers and QA Engineers)
Location: TBD

JOB PURPOSE

The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) operates with a dual mandate serving as:

1. Technology Executive for CESA 2, accountable for technology strategy, operations, resilience, risk, transformation and business enablement across the Region; and
2. Group Enterprise Platform Executive, accountable for the strategy, architecture, engineering outcomes, resilience, modernization, economics and enterprise adoption of one or more designated technology platforms or capabilities across Ecobank Group.

The role leads Country Technology Heads, owns the overall health and evolution of technology across the Region, and provides Group-wide platform direction irrespective of geography. It requires sufficient technical depth to challenge architecture and engineering decisions and to direct architects, engineers, infrastructure, cybersecurity, operations and vendor teams.

JOB CONTEXT

The CTO will provide strategic leadership across both the Regional technology mandate and the Group Enterprise Platform mandate, with accountability and performance assessed across both dimensions. The role requires an enterprise-first approach, ensuring technology decisions, investments and priorities optimize outcomes for Ecobank Group while addressing legitimate Regional and country-specific requirements.

The incumbent will drive the adoption and reuse of Group platforms, shared capabilities, APIs, architecture and engineering standards; promote enterprise-wide solutions over unnecessary country-level customization; contribute to Group technology decisions beyond the Region; enable the sharing of technology capabilities, talent and intellectual property; reduce duplication and fragmentation across the technology estate; and continuously simplify, standardize, consolidate and modernize technology across the Group.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

A. Chief Technology Officer

Regional Strategy, Leadership & Business Enablement

• Act as principal technology executive for CESA 2; translate Group and Regional strategies into a 2–3-year technology roadmap and measurable business, customer, risk and operational outcomes.
• Lead and hold Country Technology Heads accountable for performance, risk, delivery, transformation, talent, succession and cross-country capability sharing.

Technology Health, Resilience & Customer Experience

• Own regional technology health across locally, centrally, cloud, eProcess and third-party operated services, including availability, transaction success, incidents, capacity, backup, cyber recovery, high availability and RTO/RPO achievement.
• Monitor end-to-end customer journeys, identify and address systemic weaknesses, ensure technology and operational readiness for new launches, and proactively remediate vulnerabilities before they escalate into material incidents.

Architecture, Risk & Modernization

• Enforce enterprise architecture, security-by-design, resilience-by-design and non-functional standards; promote API-first, modular and reusable solutions.
• Maintain visibility of material technology, cybersecurity, regulatory and audit risks and ensure timely, sustainable remediation.
• Drive strategic platform adoption, legacy and EOL/EOS remediation, technical-debt reduction, rationalization and benefits realization.

Technology Economics & Commercial Management

• Own the Regional technology budget, improve transparency and efficiency of infrastructure, cloud, telecommunications, software and vendor spend, and assess investments on value, TCO, risk and reuse.

B. Platform Head

Platform Strategy, Architecture & Engineering

• Define the Group-wide platform strategy, boundaries, target architecture and multi-year roadmap; prioritize reusable enterprise capabilities, modernization and lifecycle decisions.
• Set engineering standards covering DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, secure development, production readiness, performance, documentation and technical-debt reduction.

Reliability, Security & Lifecycle

• Own platform health through SLIs, SLOs and SLAs; manage availability, latency, throughput, capacity, observability, disaster recovery, RTO/RPO and elimination of recurring failure modes.
• Ensure security-by-design, regulatory and data-protection compliance, dependency governance and reduction of concentration, obsolescence and vendor risks.
• Explicitly measure technology eliminated as well as technology delivered.

Enterprise Adoption, Economics & Partners

• Drive adoption and reuse across affiliates, prevent unnecessary duplication, retire obsolete components and measure technology eliminated as well as delivered.
• Manage platform TCO, utilization, licensing, unit economics and vendor performance while retaining internal architecture, engineering knowledge and decision ownership.

JOB PROFILE

Experience & Qualifications

• Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Computer Engineering or a related field; a postgraduate degree is advantageous.
• At least 15 years of IT experience, including technology service delivery and leadership in a multinational, matrixed environment.
• Strong banking technology experience with demonstrated technical engagement across one or more banking IT domains.

Skills, Capabilities & Attributes

• Technical depth: Have a strong appreciation of architecture, engineering standards, APIs/integration, data, cloud/on-prem infrastructure, performance, resilience, security and observability.
• Enterprise platform ownership: explicit end-to-end accountability for platforms, not just projects. From architecture and engineering through production, lifecycle, modernization and retirement.
• Architecture: Co-own along with EAs - the target-state architecture, technology choices, technical debt, simplification, reuse and prevention of unnecessary platform proliferation.
• Engineering: Directly or indirectly through vendor or in-house teams - drive code/solution quality, DevSecOps, automated testing, CI/CD, SRE practices, capacity engineering and non-functional requirements.
• Production ownership: availability, latency, scalability, DR, capacity, incident/problem management and elimination of recurring failure modes.
• Platform economics: TCO, licensing, infrastructure/cloud consumption, vendor dependency, unit economics and value realization.
• Enterprise reuse: platforms designed as reusable capabilities across countries, businesses and channels.
• Vendor technical leadership: internal ownership of architecture and engineering decisions even where delivery or operations are outsourced through third party vendors.
• Technology roadmap: clear 2–3year modernization roadmap covering legacy remediation, cloud readiness, technical debt and platform evolution.
• Measurable outcomes: SLO/SLA attainment, availability, MTTR, deployment frequency, change failure rate, performance, capacity headroom, security vulnerabilities, technical-debt reduction and cost efficiency.
• Security: End to end ownership of security assurance.

SUCCESS MEASURES

Performance will be assessed across both Regional and Enterprise Platform responsibilities.

A. Regional Technology Performance

• Operational health and resilience: Availability, digital and transaction success, P1/P2 and repeat incidents, MTTD/MTTR, capacity, DR and RTO/RPO achievement.
• Risk and security: Vulnerability and technology-risk remediation, audit/regulatory findings, EOL/EOS exposure and backup/cyber-recovery readiness.
• Architecture and simplification: Strategic platform adoption, architecture exceptions, retirement of redundant technology and technical-debt reduction.
• Business, transformation and economics: Digital experience, readiness for strategic priorities, roadmap delivery, production quality, benefits realization, budget performance and cost optimization.
• People and capability: Country Technology Head performance, succession coverage, capability development, retention and cross-country sharing.

B. Enterprise Platform Performance

• Reliability and engineering health: SLO/SLA attainment, transaction success, latency, incidents, MTTR, deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, defects, automation and observability.
• Architecture, lifecycle and security: Architecture compliance, exceptions, technical debt, EOL/EOS and legacy retirement, vulnerabilities, ageing risks and control compliance.
• Adoption and simplification: Affiliate adoption, reuse of APIs/services/components, duplicate implementations removed, services and infrastructure consolidated, and technology diversity reduced.
• Economics and strategic delivery: TCO, cloud/infrastructure and license utilization, unit-cost and vendor optimization, roadmap achievement, modernization milestones and business value realization.

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“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”