🚀 We’re Hiring: Head of Infrastructure, Cloud and DevOps

Build the always on platform that lets the rest of the business move fast.

📍 Location: Johannesburg or Cape Town 
🏢 Business Unit: Information Technology (CIO Office)
👤 Reports to: Chief Information Officer

Why This Role Matters

Every transaction a merchant runs, every piece of infrastructure, every deployment that ships and every alert that fires at 02:00 touches the platforms you will own. Our ability to scale, acquire new businesses and serve merchants reliably depends on infrastructure that is always on, cost controlled and engineered for what is coming next. This is the platform backbone behind everything Lesaka does.

About Lesaka

Lesaka is a fintech company on a mission to digitise commerce in Africa. We are listed on NASDAQ (LSAK) and the JSE (LSK) and serve merchants, consumers and enterprises across the continent. From spaza shops and taxi ranks to restaurants and city traders, our products power the small exchanges and the big steps of African commerce. One platform. Many products. One ambition: to be the most loved Merchant Operating Platform in Africa.

How We Operate

Our strategy starts from a simple operating truth. Exceptional customer experiences come from exceptional staff experiences. We balance four pillars across everything we do: Customer Experience, Staff Happiness, Cost Discipline and Risk Control. Each one amplifies the others when properly aligned. We have organised around one merchant journey with and clear execution and accountability.

The Role

You will be accountable for cloud infrastructure, connectivity and SIM estate, end user computing, laptop lifecycle, infrastructure procurement, the enterprise wide deployment pipeline, IAM operational controls, network operations, DevOps engineering and 24x7 platform reliability. The role contributes directly to Cost Discipline and Execution.

You will own the Build and Operate phases of the CIO value chain, and manage direct reports across Infrastructure, DevOps and IT Operations and partner closely with Security, Architecture, Applications, ERP, CRM and Finance.

What You'll Own

Platform and End User Operations

• Run cloud, network, data centre, virtualisation and hardware to agreed availability and performance standards.
• Define and maintain DR and BCP plans for all critical infrastructure. Meet RTO and RPO for all Tier 1 systems.
• Operate a 24x7 monitoring and observability platform for measure the full merchant experience across infrastructure, cloud, and deployed merchant devices.
• Own the SIM card estate and mobile connectivity for deployed merchant devices.

Infrastructure Engineering and Optimisation

• Manage cloud cost optimisation across all environments through right sizing, reserved instances and automation.
• Define network architecture across merchant locations and data centres.
• Drive Infrastructure as Code adoption so cloud provisioning is repeatable, auditable and error free.
• Lead infrastructure and hosting cost rationalisation in partnership with Applications, including legacy data centre migration to cloud.
• Operate IAM controls in line with the IAM governance framework set by Security.

DevOps Pipeline and Engineering Maturity

• Own the release and environment governance framework. Every deployment across the Merchant Division flows through this pipeline.
• Drive DevOps platform adoption across all IT workstreams.
• Define SRE metrics for all Tier 1 services and publish reliability reports.
• Govern IT change management and chair the Change Advisory Board.
• Manage the CMDB and govern ITIL service management practices.
• Embed DevSecOps practices in partnership with Security with security scanning and quality gates on every deployment.

People and Culture Leadership

• Build a high performing team. Retain talent and develop leadership depth.
• Develop specialist capability internally and reduce reliance on managed services year on year.
• Model calm under operational pressure and discipline in execution.

What You'll Bring

You have run platforms at scale. You have been on the incident call at 03:00 and you have been the person who designed the engineering practices that meant the call did not happen the next time. You think in systems, in costs and in people.

• Deep cloud engineering experience across AWS, Azure or GCP at production scale.
• Strong DevOps practice covering CI/CD pipeline governance, IaC, container platforms and SRE principles.
• Hands on knowledge of M365 tenant administration, Entra ID, Intune and modern endpoint management.
• Operational fluency in ITIL service management, change advisory and incident and problem management.
• Working knowledge of monitoring and observability platforms such as Datadog, Prometheus or Grafana.
• Comfort working in regulated environments alongside Security.

How You'll Show Up

• Leadership and performing under pressure. You steady the team in a critical incident.
• Result orientated cooperation. You collaborate hard to ship hard things.
• Commercial drive. You treat cloud spend like real money because it is.
• Service orientated planning and prioritising. You sequence work so the business never feels the seams.
• You bring engineering practices that lift the whole organisation.

Experience & Qualifications

Experience

• 10+ years in IT infrastructure, cloud engineering or DevOps.
• At least 5 years in a senior leadership role managing multi person teams.
• Proven experience migrating and managing cloud environments at scale.
• Financial services, fintech or payments exposure advantageous.

Qualifications & Certifications

• Bachelor's degree in IT, Computer Engineering or equivalent (advantageous). 
• AWS, Azure or GCP Solutions Architect or equivalent cloud certification (required).
• Kubernetes or container platform certification (advantageous).
• ITIL Foundation or higher (advantageous).

Ready to Build With Us?

If this is the kind of work you want to be part of, we want to hear from you. Apply now or share this with someone exceptional.

🌟 Our Values

At Lesaka Merchant, we are guided by four core values:
✔ Entrepreneurial Spirit – We innovate boldly and act with ownership
✔ Integrity – We operate with honesty, trust, and transparency
✔ Collective Wisdom – We collaborate and leverage shared expertise
✔ Bias to Action – We deliver with urgency, discipline, and focus