Senior Technical Program Manager at Ezra in Nairobi, Kenya

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    Senior Technical Program Manager

    EzraNairobi, Kenya

    Posted

    1 week ago

    Apply by

    27 Aug

    Full Time
    On Site
    Senior
    Banking, Insurance & Financial Services
    IT & Software

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    Job Description

    The Senior Technical Program Manager owns end-to-end delivery of technology initiatives and raises the standard for how we plan, build, and ship. Taking a structured, data-driven view of the delivery lifecycle, you'll re-engineer how teams prioritise, build, test, and release to drive predictability and consistency, bringing clear plans, honest reporting, managed risk, and a focus on unblocking teams. This role is critical to the efficient, predictable, and high-quality delivery of our core lending, value store & transfer, and data platforms.

    Key Responsibilities

    • Own the delivery of large, multi-team technology programs from definition through to production, including platform modernisation, data initiatives, cloud and AI-enabled systems.
    • Define, document and agree program deliverables, requirements, resourcing and success criteria with technology and business stakeholders.
    • Coordinate across Engineering, QA, Platform, teams to sequence work, manage dependencies and remove blockers.
    • Maintain a clear, honest view of delivery health, surfacing risks and issues to Technology leadership early and with a recommended course of action.
    • Establish technical governance frameworks that balance delivery speed with long-term architectural scalability.
    • Work with the Technology Delivery Director to define and communicate the target architecture for the lending, data and customer value platforms, and translate it into a sequenced, deliverable roadmap.
    • Ensure non-functional requirements resilience, high availability, performance, security, observability, data quality are designed in and delivered.
    • Identify systemic architectural risk and technical debt, make its cost visible, and get remediation into the plan.
    • Evaluate and pilot emerging technologies and practices, including AI-enabled and cloud-native tooling, where they serve the business.
    • Transform manual or fragmented delivery processes into scalable, data-driven systems that empower teams to ship with confidence.
    • Champion the adoption of Agile practices across Technology and partner business teams, adapting them pragmatically to Ezra's context rather than applying frameworks by the book.
    • Introduce and facilitate the ceremonies that matter – planning, reviews, retrospectives – and coach teams and stakeholders on the principles behind them.
    • Diagnose where the delivery system is failing: handoffs, approval bottlenecks, unclear ownership, weak requirements, poor estimation — and redesign the process to fix it.
    • Define and monitor delivery metrics throughput, cycle time, predictability, escaped defects and use them to drive real improvement, not reporting theatre.
    • Drive consistency in documentation, workflows and technical decision-making across programs.
    • Mentor and support engineers and technical leads in planning, estimation, risk management and stakeholder communication.
    • Foster a culture of transparency, accountability, technical rigor and continuous improvement.
    • Develop and agree stakeholder and communication plans for each major program.
    • Provide structured, decision-useful updates on progress, risk and dependency to leadership and, where relevant, to partners and customers.
    • Manage expectations and maintain alignment between technical teams and business stakeholders, including when the message is unwelcome.
    • Establish and run appropriate governance forums, with proportionate rigor enough control to be safe, not so much that delivery stalls.
    • Proactively identify systemic delivery and operational risk, drive alignment on categorization and treatment, and co-own the outcome

    Required Qualifications

    • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT or a related field.
    • 7+ years of experience in technical program, project or delivery management , Architecture, team management within software or platform engineering environments, including experience running multi-team programmes.
    • An engineering background, significant time spent as a software engineer, architect or technical lead, with strong expertise in at least one and familiarity with several programming languages.
    • Demonstrated ability to lead and improve delivery processes, including guiding teams or organizations through Agile adoption or similar change.
    • Solid understanding of Agile methodologies Scrum, Kanban, XP and the judgement to know when and how to apply them.
    • Proficiency with project and service management tooling e.g. Jira, Confluence
    • Experience leading or mentoring others, formally or informally.
    • Exceptional communication, facilitation and influencing skills, with a track record of driving complex technical decisions across multiple teams.
    • Experience in a regulated FinTech, payments or financial services environment.
    • Experience delivering in high-volume, high-availability transactional environments.
    • Experience working across multiple countries, time zones or partner organizations.
    • Lifecycle Management: Experience driving end-to-end technical projects, managing product development lifecycles from conception/prototype to release or end-of-life
    • Think architecturally . Understands systems, not just schedules. Can define a target state, reason about how the pieces fit together, and see where the real technical and delivery risk sits.
    • Is technically credible. Earns the respect of senior engineers because they understand the work and have done it, not because of the title.
    • Engineers the process . Sees ways of working as a system to be diagnosed and improved, and has the discipline to measure whether the change worked.
    • Handles ambiguity . Comfortable being handed a poorly-defined problem, a

    Job Details

    Job Function

    IT & Software

    Minimum Experience

    7 years

    Education Level

    Bachelor’s Degree

    Area of Study

    Computer Science

    Field of Study

    Computer Science

    Languages

    English

    Additional Information

    How to Apply: Send your application to the company's career page or via the application link provided on this page.

    Show You Can Run Multi-Team Programs in FinTech

    This role is about owning delivery across engineering, QA, and platform teams in a regulated, high-volume environment. Hiring managers will probe how you've handled ambiguity, driven Agile adoption, and kept stakeholders aligned when things got tough.

    1. Lead with delivery metrics: On your CV, quantify your impact: reduced cycle time by X%, improved predictability, or cut escaped defects. Use numbers to show you measure and improve delivery, not just manage schedules.

    2. Prove your technical credibility: Be ready to discuss architectural trade-offs and how you've reasoned about systems, not just timelines. Mention specific languages or tools you've used and how you've earned respect from senior engineers.

    3. Show Agile pragmatism: Describe a time you adapted Scrum or Kanban to fit the context rather than applying it by the book. Explain the ceremonies you introduced and how you coached teams on the principles behind them.

    4. Handle ambiguity with a plan: Prepare a story about taking a poorly-defined problem and turning it into a structured program. Walk through how you defined requirements, sequenced work, and got stakeholder buy-in.

    5. Emphasize risk management: Give examples of surfacing risks early, with recommended actions. Show you can make technical debt visible and get remediation into the plan.

    6. Communicate across levels: Demonstrate your ability to give decision-useful updates to leadership and manage expectations, even when the message is unwelcome. Practice a concise, honest status update.

    7. Understand the FinTech context: Highlight any experience in regulated environments, payments, or high-volume transactional systems. Show you know what it takes to maintain resilience, security, and data quality.

    8. Show mentoring and influence: Share examples of mentoring engineers or technical leads, and driving complex technical decisions across multiple teams. Emphasize your role in fostering a culture of transparency and continuous improvement.

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    Tags

    program management
    agile
    fintech
    architecture
    delivery