Head of Commercial Payments Engineering

Johannesburg, South AfricaFull-timeExecutiveOn-sitePosted 23 Oct 2026

Job Overview

Absa is appointing a Head of Commercial Payments Engineering in Randburg, Johannesburg (requisition R-15992133; full time; closing 30 October 2026). The Head of Engineering – Commercial Payments is accountable for the end-to-end engineering strategy, architecture, design, development, delivery, reliability and continuous improvement of Absa’s Commercial Payments technology products and platforms, spanning merchant acquiring, point-of-sale (POS), SoftPOS, e-commerce payment gateways, QR payments, digital wallets, payment switching, transaction processing, merchant onboarding and servicing, settlement and reconciliation.

Working with the CIO, business product owners, enterprise architecture, infrastructure, cybersecurity and risk, the incumbent translates business strategy into scalable, secure and resilient engineering solutions that support revenue growth, operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and superior merchant experiences. The role owns the full technology lifecycle, drives engineering excellence through modern software practices, automation, DevSecOps, cloud and platform modernisation and responsible AI-enabled engineering, and leads multidisciplinary engineering and business analysis teams while managing strategic technology vendors and budgets.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute the Commercial Payments engineering strategy and roadmap aligned to the CIO’s direction and Group Technology standards

• Lead end-to-end design of payment solutions across channels, gateways, switching platforms, APIs, integration layers and back-end processing

• Ensure solutions are secure, scalable, highly available and engineered for high transaction throughput, low latency and peak volumes

• Embed modern engineering practices: CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, security by design and engineering metrics

• Lead payment platform modernisation, legacy rationalisation and secure API integration of fintechs, PSPs, merchants and partners

• Own availability, stability and recoverability of payment platforms, including major incident, problem and capacity management

• Drive monitoring, observability, disaster recovery and resilience testing across critical payment services

• Own Agile engineering delivery, balancing strategic change with production support, mandatory changes and technical debt reduction

• Lead, develop and retain a high-performing engineering organisation, building technical leadership and succession

• Manage engineering budgets, vendor costs, technology investment, vendor selection and contract governance

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Engineering or related field

• Significant technology leadership experience in banking, payments, financial services or another highly regulated environment

• Strong experience in payment processing, card acquiring, payment gateways, transaction switching or merchant services

• Proven end-to-end solution architecture, software engineering, systems integration and platform modernisation experience

• Strong knowledge of DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, application performance monitoring and production engineering

• Experience managing technology budgets, vendors, commercial contracts and technology risk

• Advantageous: Visa/Mastercard scheme experience; BASE24, Postilion or Cybersource; cloud, Kubernetes, API management and event streaming

Skills & Requirements

Payments EngineeringMerchant AcquiringPayment GatewaysTransaction SwitchingSolution ArchitectureDevSecOpsCI/CDPlatform ModernisationAPI IntegrationSite ReliabilityAgile DeliveryVendor ManagementEngineering LeadershipCard Schemes