Careers at Safaricom Kenya

Brief Description

Reporting to the Senior Manager – Systems Engineering, the SRE team lead will be responsible for championing and driving operational excellence through driving the adoption of SRE best practices and ensuring system availability, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, security and capacity planning.

Key Responsibilities:

• Oversee and lead the implementation of the SRE frameworks and practices within the organization using the systems operations tool chain. Foster a collaborative and inclusive team culture that emphasizes reliability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Team Management: Ensure team performance management while fostering an environment of trust, learning, collaboration and cultivate a culture of high performance.
• Build, recruit, retain, manage and develop a world class SRE team.
• Operational Excellence – Define, measure, monitor and report key SRE performance indicators and escalate breaches and violations. This will help in informing the maturity level of the team as well as to inform the Backlog and related decisions.Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify, prioritize, and address reliability issues.
• Stakeholder Engagement by engaging the business teams and promoting a culture of participation and collaboration to enhance effective and informed decision making.
• Define, measure, monitor and report key systems reliability performance indicators and escalate breaches and violations.
• Problem and Incident management – lead incident response efforts, ensuring that incidents are resolved quickly and effectively while minimizing downtime and customer impact. Conduct post-incident reviews to identify root causes and implement preventive measures.
• Capacity Planning - Monitor system resource utilization and plan for capacity upgrades as needed to support business growth. Optimize resource allocation and cost-efficiency.
• Security and Compliance: Collaborate with security teams to ensure the reliability and security of systems and applications. Ensure compliance with relevant industry standards and regulations.
• Drivecontinuous improvement of applications through planned chaos simulations, AIOPs, automation and proactive alerting strategies.
• Documenting “tribal” knowledge and constant upkeep of the playbooks, runbooks to ensure teams get the information they need right when they need it.
• Champion and lead implementation of machine learning, self-healing and drive the organization towards a no-ops model.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (Master's degree preferred).
• Several years of experience in SRE or a related field, with a proven track record of improving system reliability.
• Strong leadership and team management skills.
• Proficiency in programming/scripting languages (e.g., Python, Go, Ruby).
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).
• Knowledge of cloud computing platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Familiarity with monitoring and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack).
• Excellent problem-solving and communication skills.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and handle high-pressure situations effectively.

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Brief Description 

Reporting to the Enterprise Support Manager- the holder of the position will perform complex EBU 1st and 2nd Line technical support operations for global enterprise customers as well as support digital services as per respective portfolio, perform 2nd line support for escalations from the Enterprise Customer Support team and liaise with internal stakeholders and vendors to offer permanent solutions to recurring problems.

Key Responsibilities:

• Handle escalations from Safaricom Enterprise Platinum customers, its partners and Safaricom special projects; 
• Research, review and recommend emerging technologies and innovative customer solutions and liaise with stakeholders for technology adoption to maximize service availability; 
• Oversee fixed data partner engineers support and effectively liaise with internal subject matter experts-level 3 support players to diagnose, troubleshoot, and repair complex customer issues; 
• Perform capacity monitoring and reporting on individual client circuits as well as network resources; 
• Perform scheduled preventive maintenance for proactive support for global customers; 
• Perform root cause analysis on issues to avoid recurrence; 
• Escalate and follow up issues with NOC and relevant backend teams; 
• Effectively communicate ticket status, service outages and escalate as per established customer support and escalation matrix.
• Ensure all customer solutions are documented; 
• Ensure all running configurations are backed up; Ensure all Preventive and restorative procedures are documented and adhered to.
• Ensure communication progressively and properly done to all stakeholders Weekly and monthly reporting on link performance Role requirements;
• Employ Data science analytics tools to simplify and Analyze Enterprise Edge IP network logs to resolve and report running faults before they become service affecting.
• Lead Digital Empowerment of Customer facing teams to improve customer SLA and significantly reduce BAU escalations to Backend Infrastructure team.
• Lead agile collaboration activities with digital NOC team and participate in End to End EBU automation project squad.
• Optimize and monitor alerts on the Enterprise IP core and follow up on resolutions.
• Be a custodian of network documentation and improvements of the versions.
• Spares tracking and management in liaison with the responsible sections in the company for the IP devices in use.
• Fix network faults on the transport network serving the Enterprise IP network in co-ordination with the regional networks Ops team.
• Co-ordinate proactive exercises on solutions offering to customers to ensure optimal performance and reduce possibilities of service outages in co-ordination with internal backend teams
• Liaise with vendors and fiber providers for resolution of the network faults within the agreed timelines.
• Track QOS affecting parameters e.g. utilization and latencies on the last mile network serving enterprise customers and ensure proactive resolutions.
• Hold regular service review meetings liaising with EBU account management teams with enterprise customers as per portfolio
• Work closely with the customer experience teams to drive NPS 

Qualifications

• Degree in Telecoms, Engineering, IT, Physics or Math or any other relevant qualification.
• Minimum 3 years’ Experience in a busy ISP/Telco in managing large IP & Transport networks.
• Must have Network Connectivity Certifications on professional level .i.e. CCIP, CCNP, CCVP, CCSP HCNP, HCIP, CWNP and above.
• and/or
• Strong understanding of emerging digital technologies: SDWAN, IoT, Managed Security Services (Cisco ASA/Fortinet/Cyberoam/SOPHOS), AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMware, IoT, Telematics, RPA. Certifications and practical hands-on experience on the same is an added advantage. 
• Basic knowledge in Python, Java, Kubernetes. Certification on the same is an added advantage
• CISA, CISM, CEH certifications are an added advantage
• Strong knowledge of microwave and fiber transmission and access technologies i.e. TDM,SDH plus experience with vendors like Rad
• Ability to manage/troubleshoot a large Service provider Transmission& IP network
• Conversant with IPv4, IPv6 Addressing Schemes, Variable Length Subnet Masking (VLSM), VLANs, IP QOS, Triple play services.
• Knowledge in ISP services; DNS, SMTP, POP3, RADIUS/PPPoE, Web Hosting, 
• Knowledge of data networking and networking protocols in reference to the WAN and LAN environments.
• General knowledge in all layers of data communications, customer applications and associated technologies.
• Knowledge and experience with network operating systems such as Cisco IOS, IOS-XR, IOS-XE and Huawei OS 
• Candidate should demonstrate deep and wide knowledge ITIL, Agile, SCRUM, DevNet frameworks and relevant certifications
• Strong technical analysis, troubleshooting, and problem resolution skills, including research of customer issues, issue re-creation, and log file analysis and experience in offering technical support to enterprise customers
• Strong work ethic; Capability to influence cross-functional teams and to build trust with team, clients, and internal departments; Capacity to learn quickly and adapt to changing priorities; 
• Ability to understand and communicate highly complex technical issues; Commitment to quality.

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Brief Description

Reporting to the Quality Engineering Lead, the position holder will oversee and perform Automated testing on all applications from the earliest opportunity and with precision before any application is deployed to production.  Communicating all test issues effectively to the QA manager. Managing the daily workload of a Tester and giving direction on projects. Participate in the test automation tool selection and adoption process; Develop and execute automated test suites using COTS and custom tools; Integrate test suites into the test management system and custom test harnessed.

Key Responsibilities

Technical:

• Produce & manage level test plans, estimate effort and resource test plans
• Monitor changes to scope during the development cycle and re-evaluate plans and resource accordingly
• Manage expectations of when testing activities will be complete mitigating risks to key milestones
• Liaise with the relevant departments to ensure key infrastructure (environments, interfaces & access) is set-up to enable all required testing activities
• Manage the UAT process by supporting clients to establish key scenarios to test their business processes to maximize benefit of the UAT process ensuring full acceptance and integration of the software solution
• Assign work to QA Engineers and manage successful completion of work to set deadlines
• Manage processes and procedures locally within the test team and with external teams across the SDLC to drive and implement improvements to optimize efficiency and first-time pass rate
• Measure, develop and optimize quality of team outputs and performance.
• Build test scripts from various sources including functional specifications, technical specifications and sessions with developers and designers
• Review requirements, specifications, user documentation, help files, and other project documentation to assure quality of the products and tests to be developed; i.e., perform manual static testing.
• Select and develop appropriate test automation tools, applying the latest techniques in test automation; e.g., data-driven testing.
• Use risk-driven techniques to develop, maintain, and execute automated test suites for various Software Cafeteria products; i.e., perform automated dynamic testing.
• Execute automated tests and validate the results.
• Work with the Development team to capture and reuse automated Unit Test Cases, Test Stubs and Drivers, and other Development test objects.
• Work with the Development team to create and maintain an automated nightly build verification (“smoke”) test.
• Ensure proper version control and configuration management of all test objects developed and test environments used.
• To facilitate in-house performance testing ensuring that all key infrastructure, data requirements are met as well as establishing the best tools for the job
• Identify key components of the system that are suitable for automation and implement approach to deliver benefits through automation
• Experience with Continuous Integration tool (e.g. Jenkins) Experience with GitLab to implement for the 

Results Tracking and Reporting:

• Monitor defects raised by the team and challenge their prioritization supporting to resolution.
• Manage all issues that impact on the team’s ability to complete testing activities on schedule
• Create and maintain manual test repositories and regression test packs with a view of constant optimization to improve test estimates
• Create, maintain and manage test related documentation C
• Provide the QA Manager with accurate and precise estimates for assigned task duration, along with confidence levels and foreseeable dependencies.
• Assist the QA Manager in preparing test plans, budgets, and schedules.
• Take responsibility to ensure all solutions delivered meet the highest quality standards.

Qualifications:

• At least 3 - 5 years of automated testing experience (Must demonstrate)
• Qualified to ISEB/ISTQB Foundation Level or better.
• You’ve got a working knowledge of Docker.
• You’re interested in growing your knowledge and skills in Test Environment Provisioning and Configuring using technologies like Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, GCP, or AWS.
• You have experience with Continuous Integration systems (e.g., Jenkins, Travis, GitLab, CircleCI etc).
• Experience in one or more of the following programming languages and tools: Python, Selenium, Java, XML, SQL, JavaScript.
• Degree in Computer Science or any other relevant (Priority given to skills over degree major)
• Exceptional Communication skills.
• Demonstrate excellent documentation skills and an aptitude to clearly communicate findings and results.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and deliver work in a high-pressure environment.
• Show full commitment to continuous improvement of processes and deliverables.
• Demonstrate a high degree of literacy, numeracy, and accuracy
• Possess good problem-solving skills
• Proactive, highly motivated, and a strong team player with a positive attitude
• Experience with REST API testing tools such as Postman, SOAP UI, and, or Swagger