HoD Digital Business Support Systems Job Safaricom
Safaricom
Job description
IT Jobs, Safaricom Jobs. HoD Digital Business Support Systems leads BSS strategy, oversees IT systems, and drives platform transformation, requires a Computer Science/IT Degree and 10+ years IT leadership experience.
Job Summary
Reporting to the Chapter Lead – Digital IT, the HoD Digital Business Support Systems will provide strategic planning, modernization leadership, and operations excellence for the Business Support Systems (BSS) domain. The role drives the end-to-end delivery of agile, AI-enabled BSS that enable customer acquisition, revenue management, and digital service evolution across Revenue Management, Value Added Services (VAS), Enterprise Integration, Contact Centre, Order Management, and Financial Reporting.
The role holder champions the shift from monolithic legacy platforms to simplified, cost-efficient, cloud-native, AI-native, TMF Open API-compliant architectures; leads the transformation to intelligent, predictive CARE and digital self-service; and accelerates time-to-market through composable platforms, reusable templates, and centralized SRE. Working with the senior executive team, business leaders, and external partners, the role ensures systems and services are reliable, secure, scalable, and future-proof — delivering operational discipline, commercial enablement, and superior customer experience across the full lifecycle.
Responsibilities
- BSS Modernization & Platform Strategy – Lead the transformation from complex monolithic platforms to simplified, cost-efficient, cloud-native BSS. Define and execute the 3-year technical roadmap (LRP) ensuring TMF Open API compliance, AI-native architecture, and composable platform design. Own architecture standards for BSS, VAS, and integration platforms. Drive vendor selection, partnership strategy, and data governance.
- Intelligent CARE & Digital Customer Experience – Transform fragmented channel tools into digital-first, AI-driven self-service CARE platforms. Embed AI, automation, and agentic systems to execute customer events including predictive CARE. Enable converged customer care platforms (Customer 360 / MDM) and intelligent, insights-led GTM tooling for trade, retail, and marketing.
- Agile Delivery & Time-to-Market Acceleration – Shift from ticket-based waterfall delivery to composable modern platforms supporting weekly releases with automated regression and testing. Drive reusable artefacts built centrally and shared across Tribes. Reduce time-to-market by >30% through “build once — use many” templates. Ensure 100% delivery yield on all PI commitments.
- Centralized SRE & Operational Excellence – Establish and lead centralized Platform & SRE squads enabling 24/7 maintenance, predictive ops, and zero-touch operations for all business squads. Ensure >99.99% system availability and MTTR <30 minutes. Drive AIOps, business continuity planning, and operational excellence programmes.
- Financial, Governance & People Leadership – Manage departmental CAPEX (approx. KES 5B) and OPEX (approx. KES 2B) budgets with zero revenue leakage and zero overdue audit issues. Drive agile adoption, squad structure design, and chapter development. Ensure compliance with Safaricom policies and ISO standards
Qualifications
- Degree in Information Services, BSc Computer Sciences, BSc Electrical Engineering (or similar tertiary qualification)
- Over 10 years management experience, in a technical delivery and operations domain.
- Experience leading Business Support Systems (Planning, Delivery and Operations)
- Knowledge of Billing and VAS products and services.
- Knowledge of Enterprise Integration
- Approving and monitoring of Departmental Opex and Capex budget (CAPEX – KES 5B and OPEX KES 2B)