Technical Project Manager

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE 1. Drive the day-to-day technical delivery of the Core Wallet and Core Banking Transformation program across one or more workstreams (Technical Build & Integration, Data Migration, Distribution, Operations, or others as assigned), under the direction of the Programme Director. 2. Own the integrated technical plan, dependencies, RAID, ceremonies, and reporting for assigned workstreams — translating the Programme Director's roadmap into executable sprints, milestones, and deliverables. 3. Coordinate Core Platform Supplier, third-party vendors, D&F Tech, and OPCO technology teams on a daily basis to unblock issues, manage dependencies, and keep the program on plan, on budget, and on quality. 4. Provide the Programme Director with clear, structured, evidence-based reporting on progress, risks, issues, and decisions required — and surface escalations early enough to be acted on. MAIN FUNCTIONS – RESPONSIBILITIES & ACTIVITIES Technical planning & execution • Build and maintain the detailed technical project plan for assigned workstreams; integrate it into the overall program plan owned by the Programme Director. • Decompose the Programme Director's roadmap into sprints, milestones, deliverables, and acceptance criteria with clear owners and dates. • Track progress against plan; spot slippage early; replan proactively with the Programme Director when needed. • Run sprint planning, daily stand-ups, demos, retrospectives, and other delivery ceremonies for assigned squads. • Maintain a single, accurate, up-to-date view of status, scope, schedule, and budget. Dependency, RAID & change management • Identify, document, and actively manage dependencies within the workstream and across other workstreams (Product, Compliance, Data, Distribution, Operations, Customer Care). • Maintain Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies (RAID) logs; drive mitigation actions to closure. • Run change control for the workstream — assess impact (scope, time, cost, quality), recommend decisions, and route through program governance. • Escalate blockers and material risks to the Programme Director with clear options and recommendations, not just problems. Vendor & cross-team coordination • Coordinate Core Wallet delivery teams and third-party vendors on a daily basis — track SOW deliverables, milestones, and SLA adherence. • Align D&F Tech, Architecture, Security, OPCO technology, and BU teams on shared deliverables and integration points. • Chair working groups; ensure decisions are documented, owners assigned, and follow-through happens. • Hold vendors and internal teams accountable to commitments without losing the working relationship. Testing, quality & technical readiness • Plan and orchestrate SIT, UAT, performance, and security testing cycles in coordination with QA, vendors, and BU teams. • Track defects, drive triage, prioritization, and closure against agreed quality gates. • Ensure environments, test data, and access are in place ahead of each test cycle. • Validate technical readiness for go-live: cutover plans, rollback plans, runbooks, monitoring, and on-call coverage. • Coordinate dry runs and rehearsals; chase down every open item before cutover. Governance, reporting & documentation • Produce weekly / fortnightly workstream status reports for the Programme Director and program governance forums. • Maintain accurate project artefacts: plans, RAID logs, decision logs, action logs, meeting minutes, and change records. • Contribute to Steering Committee packs with clear data, options, and recommendations. • Ensure traceability between requirements, designs, build, test results, and deployment. Budget, resource & operational discipline • Track workstream budget consumption against forecast; flag variances early. • Manage resource onboarding, allocation, and offboarding across the workstream — internal staff, contractors, and vendor resources. • Drive operational discipline in tooling: JIRA hygiene, Confluence documentation, SharePoint structure, and reporting cadence. • Capture lessons learned at each phase and feed them into subsequent OPCO rollouts. LEVEL OF EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, Telecommunications or equivalent. PMP, PRINCE2, Scrum Master (CSM / PSM), or SAFe certifications are strongly preferred. LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE: Minimum 10 years of project / delivery management experience in technology, with at least 3 years in fintech, mobile money, digital banking, or telecom. Hands-on technical delivery experience on core wallet, core banking, or payments platforms Proven track record running technical workstreams within larger transformation programs, including integration delivery and data migration. Experience managing tier-1 vendor delivery teams alongside third-party integrators. Experience in African markets is preferred; experience in multi-country delivery is an advantage. Strong working knowledge of Agile (Scrum / Kanban), Waterfall, and hybrid delivery models; comfortable picking the right approach for the context. INTERPERSONAL SKILLS REQUIRED: Highly organized; relentless on follow-through and closure. Strong written and verbal communication; able to produce crisp, executive-ready status reports. Comfortable holding engineers, architects, and vendors to account without damaging working relationships. Pragmatic problem-solver; reaches for the simplest solution that works. Calm under pressure during cutovers, incidents, and escalations. Comfortable working with diverse, multicultural, multilingual teams across Africa. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: Sufficient technical literacy to read architecture and integration designs, challenge estimates, and understand the technical trade-offs being made. Strong command of project management tooling (JIRA, Confluence, MS Project / Smartsheet) and reporting tools (Excel, Power BI). Working knowledge of the pan-African fintech / mobile money ecosystem (regulation, MNO partnerships, agent economics) is a plus. High availability and geographical mobility — periodic travel across AFS OPCOs is expected, particularly around go-live windows. English required; French is a strong advantage given AFS footprint.