M-Pesa Africa – Release Train Engineer – Financial Services - (22000113) at Safaricom Kenya

Role Purpose

M-Pesa, is a pioneering fintech business and global market leader in mobile money. Starting from 2007 as a convenient means by which the unbanked and underbanked could make digital payments, M-Pesa has now grown to offer over 50 million active customers financial services, enterprise, merchant and retail solutions. We are proud of our work in enabling the digital economy in our markets, and in driving financial inclusion.

M-Pesa Africa is now making strides to deepen and strengthen its offering to consumers and businesses in our operating countries, making it easier for them to manage their money and get more from their limited resources.

Working within the scaled agile framework (SAFe), you will perform all aspects of the Release Train Engineer (RTE) role. This includes being accountable for the key competencies of an Agile Release Train (ART) and facilitating the execution of ART ceremonies and processes. Your role will be to manage impediments, escalating when necessary, to manage risk, to help ensure value delivery and help drive relentless improvement within your ART and across your teams. You will also have an opportunity to directly support our Lean-Agile Transformation to the MPA Target Operating model, helping to coach leaders, teams and Scrum Masters and develop the “agile mindset”. 

In addition, you will have vendor management responsibility for third party organizations providing resources and deliveries consumed by the ART, and customer management responsibilities for the Vodacom and Safaricom Markets to which the ART delivers products, services and operational support

Key Role Responsibilities

Products will focus on Financial Services including Merchant and Consumer loan products and Overdrafts.  Future products will support a full range of M-Pesa services including from RFP through in-market pilots and innovations to mature product. The ART delivers a wide set of financial products and services, above and beyond normal financial transactions, including insurance, savings and wealth.

Responsibilities:

1. RTE for the Financial Service ART, including evolving the ART to support future expansion and provide operational support
2. Vendor Management for third party suppliers to the ART including CAPEX budget and vendor performance measures
3. Customer Management of Markets including aligning dependencies, addressing issues and alignment of expectations.
4. Additional expertise needed: Mobile Telco and either Mobile Payment or Financial Services experience.

Exhibits Servant leadership:

1. Listen and support teams in problem identification and decision-making
2. Create an environment of mutual influence
3. Understand and empathize with others
4. Encourage and support the personal development of each individual and the development of teams
5. Coach people with powerful questions rather than use authority
6. Think beyond day-to-day activities; apply systems thinking
7. Support the teams’ commitments
8. Be open and appreciate openness in others
9. Encourage collaboration between teams, Product Management and System Architects
10. Be obsessively customer focussed

Help align Strategy with execution:

1. Delivery of the Strategic Product RoadMap
2. Collaborate with Lean Portfolio Management, Product Management and System Architects to help ensure we are working towards the right outcomes
3. Understand and operate within Lean Budgets and ensure adherence to Guardrails

Improve Flow:

1. Manage and optimize the flow of value through the ART through ongoing evaluation of practices associated with DevSecOps and Release on Demand in the Continuous Delivery Pipeline
2. Provide input on resourcing to address critical bottlenecks
3. Ensure RISKs are managed, to remove impediments and ensuring mitigations are implemented.

Prepare and Facilitate PI Planning:

1. Facilitate PI Planning readiness by fostering the Continuous Exploration process
2. Assist with economic decision-making by facilitating feature and capability estimation by teams and the roll-up to Epics, where necessary
3. Prepare for and facilitate PI Planning event
4. Summarize Team PI Objectives into Program PI Objectives
5. Resource management and recruitment associated with ART including 3rd party resources

Guide Program Execution:

1. Track the delivery of features
2. Help manage risks and dependencies
3. Escalate and track impediments
4. Facilitate periodic synchronization events, including the ART sync, Systems Demos and Inspect and Adapt workshops
5. Ensure effective vendor management
6. Provide regular reporting and analysis to drive effective decision making and continuous improvement

Encourage Innovation:

1. Help drive the Lean User Experience (UX) innovation cycle
2. Drive regular innovation and exploration cycles to improve ROI and customer satisfaction in line with the SAFe framework

Drive Relentless Improvement:

1. Drive relentless improvement via Inspect and Adapt workshops; assess the agility level of the ART and help them improve
2. Foster Communities of Practice and the use of engineering and Built-In Quality practices
3. Work with the Value Management Office on program execution and operational excellence

Additional accountabilities:

1. Supplier Management and negotiation on scope and quality
2. ART and team design to support flow and manage ART performance
3. Resource Management and Coaching
4. ART Budget reporting and planning

 
QUALIFICATIONS
 
Apply if you have:

Essential

1. Degree Qualification - Preferably STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
2. Relevant certified Scrum Master qualification, for example, SAFe Scrum Master or equivalent
3. Strong understanding of Mobile Payments or Financial Service with at least 5 years professional experience with a banking, mobile payments or financial services provider
4. Experience of software development lifecycle in complex, data driven initiatives is essential, especially within agile methodologies (e.g., Scrum, SAFe)
5. Agile Experience including international suppliers or markets – minimum 5 years
6. Contagious passion for, and commitment to, driving mobile money growth and innovation
7. Communication and relationship management experience
8. Excellent problem analysis and resolution skills to support work in reactive and proactive environments

Desirable

1. SAFe certified Release Train Engineer
2. Program Management/Leadership qualification
3. ITIL Service Management qualification or experience
4. Agile Transformation and Hybrid/Waterfall supplier experience
5. Demonstrable working knowledge and competence using JIRA and Confluence
6. Mobile Payment or Financial Payment Service Experience

What you can expect from us:

1. We believe in a fair and robust interview process
2. We have a robust flexible total reward scheme
3. Dedicated support and mentoring/coaching
4. Opportunity to develop and progress – plus a solid dedication to work-life integration. It all means you’ll have everything you need to advance your career and achieve your full potential.

Note to Applicants

As part of our recruitment process we will request the below documentation which will be required as soft copies at a later stage of the process.

1. An updated CV with a confirmation of three referees- 2 must be professional and must have supervised you at some point, the other referee can be a colleague in the same professional field. If the referees are within the same organization that you are working with, you will need to confirm to us that it’s okay to contact them in writing (via email). This also includes all references within the Human Resources department.
2. Scanned copy of certificate of good conduct from the CID (Less than 1 year old) - Applicable to Kenyans Only
3. Scanned copy of certificate from Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) – Applicable to Kenyans Only
4. Scanned copy of University Certificate
5. Scanned copy of your National ID / Passport-Legal Form of Identification