M-Pesa Africa : Manager – Change, Release & Transition

Description
We are Africa’s largest fintech providing financial services to more than 60 million customers and 5 million businesses, with transactions of over $1.2 billion a day across 8 countries. Driven by a strong passion in innovation, we provide Africa’s leading super app, the M-PESA Super App, pioneering a digital financial ecosystem that empowers customers and businesses to send and receive money and payments across the world, enables them with access to affordable credit and savings propositions, and provides them with best-in-class solutions to easily grow their wealth and businesses. United in our purpose to Transform Lives, we are determined and energetic in exploring and delivering solutions that consistently address our customers’ needs as we believe that we can only succeed if our customers and the community around us are succeeding.

About The Role:

To manage and coordinate Change, Release, and Transition processes across M-Pesa Africa, ensuring that new systems and services are introduced into production in a controlled, compliant, and stable manner. The Manager ensures operational readiness, governance adherence, risk mitigation, and seamless collaboration between technical and business stakeholders.

Key Accountabilities and Decision Ownership

1. Change Management

• Own and lead the end-to-end change lifecycle in alignment with ITIL best practices.
• Chair CAB meetings and conduct risk assessments, deployment readiness checks, and quality reviews.
• Monitor change KPIs (e.g., success rate, failure rate, emergency changes) and drive continuous improvement.
• Manage emergency changes and ensure effective communication with senior stakeholders.

2. Release Management

• Plan and coordinate the release of software, infrastructure, and patches across environments.
• Align release windows with business calendars and platform readiness.
• Ensure version control, test validations, rollback plans, and compliance checks are in place.

3. Transition Management

• Manage transitions from project delivery to steady-state operations.
• Define and enforce operational acceptance criteria, go-live checklists, and OAT plans.
• Coordinate handovers and ensure support teams are trained and resourced for new services.
• Track transition progress, risks, and readiness milestones across markets.
• Conduct post-release reviews and lead root cause analysis for failed deployments.

1. 4. Risk, Compliance & Governance
2. 5. Stakeholder Engagement & Reporting
3. 6. Leadership & People Management

• Implement and enforce change and release controls to minimize service disruption.
• Maintain change logs, release documentation, and transition artifacts for audit readiness.
• Ensure compliance with internal policies, security standards, and regulatory requirements.
• Support internal and external audits and respond to compliance-related queries.
• Act as the primary liaison for change, release, and transition matters across markets and teams.
• Provide clear reporting on upcoming releases, risk items, and performance KPIs to leadership.
• Collaborate with market IT teams to ensure localized readiness and smooth deployment.
• Drive process optimization by engaging delivery, support, and DevOps teams.
• Lead a team of 5–8 change analysts, release coordinators, and transition leads.
• Set clear objectives, conduct performance reviews, and mentor staff for growth.
• Ensure appropriate resource allocation and team coverage for project and release demands.
• Promote a culture of accountability, proactive planning, and continuous improvement.

Knowledge And Experience

• 5 to 7 years of IT Service Management experience, with at least 2 years in team leadership or supervisory roles.
• Proven expertise in ITIL Change Enablement, Release Management, and Transition Planning.
• Strong track record of managing CABs, emergency changes, and high-volume release cycles.
• Experience with go-live readiness, OAT planning, and service handovers to operations.
• Knowledge of hybrid/cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, DevOps environments, and enterprise systems.
• Familiarity with automating elements of change/release workflows is a plus.

Technical / Professional Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related STEM discipline.
• ITIL v3 or ITIL 4 Certification.
• Strong communication, stakeholder engagement, and planning skills.
• Working knowledge of data protection and regulatory compliance standards.
• Experience in working in dynamic and high-growth environments.
• Mobile Payment or Financial Services experience.
• Experience working in dynamic, multi-market, and multicultural environments.
• Project management certification (e.g., PRINCE2, PMP, AgilePM).

We are the leading telecommunication company in East Africa. Our purpose is to transform lives by connecting people to people, people to opportunities and people to information. We keep over 42 million customers connected and play a critical role in the society, supporting over one million jobs both directly and indirectly while our total economic value was estimated at KES 362 Billion ($ 3.2 billion) for the 12 months through March 2021. We are listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) and with annual revenues of close to KES 298 Billion ($2.5 billion) as at March 2022. We were founded in 1997 as a fully owned subsidiary of Telkom Kenya before a 40 percent acquisition by Vodafone Group PLC in May 2000, and a public offering of 25 percent shares through the NSE in 2008. Under the management of Vodafone Group PLC, we welcomed Michael Joseph, as our first CEO, a few months later in July of 2000. He led the company’s growth to accommodate 16.71 million subscribers from the previous 20,000, largely owing to innovative products like M-PESA in 2007.