HoD Digital Business Support Systems

Safaricom PLC is a leading telecommunications company in Kenya, founded in 1997. Headquartered in Nairobi, it provides a wide range of communication services and is a major player in the IT and telecoms industry.

The Head of Digital Business Support Systems, reporting to the Chapter Lead – Digital IT, is responsible for providing strategic leadership in the BSS domain. This includes overseeing the end-to-end delivery of agile, AI-enabled BSS that support customer acquisition, revenue management, and the evolution of digital services across various areas like Revenue Management, Value Added Services (VAS), Enterprise Integration, Contact Centre, Order Management, and Financial Reporting. The role champions the transition from legacy platforms to simplified, cost-efficient, cloud-native, AI-native, and TMF Open API-compliant architectures, aiming to transform customer care into an intelligent, predictive, and digital self-service model. It also focuses on accelerating time-to-market through composable platforms, reusable templates, and centralized Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). The role involves working with senior executives, business leaders, and external partners to ensure systems are reliable, secure, scalable, and future-proof, delivering operational discipline, commercial enablement, and superior customer experience throughout the service lifecycle.

1. Lead the transformation of BSS platforms from monolithic to simplified, cost-efficient, and cloud-native architectures, defining and executing a 3-year technical roadmap that ensures TMF Open API compliance, AI-native architecture, and composable design.
2. Own the architecture standards for BSS, VAS, and integration platforms, and drive vendor selection, partnership strategy, and data governance.
3. Transform fragmented channel tools into digital-first, AI-driven self-service customer care platforms, embedding AI, automation, and agentic systems for customer event execution, including predictive care.
4. Enable converged customer care platforms (Customer 360 / MDM) and intelligent, insights-led go-to-market tooling for trade, retail, and marketing.
5. Shift from ticket-based waterfall delivery to composable modern platforms supporting weekly releases with automated regression and testing.
6. Drive the creation of reusable artifacts centrally shared across Tribes, aiming to reduce time-to-market by over 30% through "build once — use many" templates and ensuring 100% delivery yield on all Program Increment (PI) commitments.
7. Establish and lead centralized Platform & SRE squads to enable 24/7 maintenance, predictive operations, and zero-touch operations for all business squads.
8. Ensure system availability exceeds 99.99% and Mean Time To Recover (MTTR) is less than 30 minutes, driving AIOps, business continuity planning, and operational excellence programs.
9. Manage departmental CAPEX (approximately KES 5B) and OPEX (approximately KES 2B) budgets, ensuring zero revenue leakage and no overdue audit issues.
10. Drive agile adoption, squad structure design, and chapter development, ensuring compliance with Safaricom policies and ISO standards.
11. Foster deep team connection to customers and communities, building authentic relationships and making customer-centric decisions.
12. Simplify processes through digitalization, promote a digital mindset, and focus on key priorities with brilliant execution.
13. Create an inspiring vision for the team, empowering others to go beyond plans and challenging them to reimagine processes.
14. Prompt new thinking and ideas, using external environment knowledge to identify growth opportunities.
15. Create psychological safety, fuel innovative ideas, and learn from successes and failures with resilience.
16. Share ongoing learning and personal purpose, and learn fast from digital adoption to drive simplicity and efficiency.
17. Articulate the team’s role in strategy, prioritize resources, and actively collaborate to break silos.
18. Develop others, coach them to take ownership, and create an inclusive environment.
19. Uphold the company code of conduct, policies, and procedures, ensuring integrity and accountability.
20. Adhere to safety, health, and wellbeing policies, guidelines, and procedures.

1. Bachelor's Degree in Information Services, Computer Sciences, Electrical Engineering, or a similar tertiary qualification.
2. Over 10 years of management experience in a technical delivery and operations domain.
3. Proven experience leading Business Support Systems (Planning, Delivery, and Operations).
4. Knowledge of Billing and Value Added Services (VAS) products and services.
5. Understanding of Enterprise Integration.
6. Experience in approving and monitoring departmental Opex and Capex budgets (specifically CAPEX – KES 5B and OPEX KES 2B).