Business Applications Digital

The genesis of Gulf African Bank (GAB) can be traced back to 2005, when a group of motivated Kenyans envisioned establishing an Islamic bank as an alternative to conventional banking in the country. By conducting business on the principles of Shari'ah, the bank would provide an ethical and fair mode of banking for all. Gulf African Bank is the first and largest Islamic Bank in Kenya and one of the fastest growing banks in the history of the banking sector of the country. The bank offers fully Shari'ah compliant products and services that address the needs of not just Muslims, but everyone in the country including individuals, corporate companies, and institutions. The bank was incorporated on August 9th, 2006 and started operations as a commercial bank in January 8th 2008, in a historic event, where it was granted the country’s first fully-fledged commercial banking license as a dedicated Islamic bank, by the Central Bank of Kenya.

Reports to: Senior Manager, BIS

Job Purpose

• Design, Improve, Test, Implement, Administer, Support and Maintain business applications and digitization initiatives across the bank.
• The incumbent will manage the team and also consult with other managers in ICT and across other departments to determine and fulfil agreed business objectives.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with ICT management team in identifying and prioritising strategic objectives of the department.
• Meet or exceed uptime targets for core banking system and other systems and channels.
• Ensure periodical processes (EOD, EOM & EOY) are executed on a timely and accurate basis.
• Provide timely, accurate and proactive service, while executing an improvement program based on user feedback.
• Identify and automate candidate manual processes and also liaise with other units across the bank to deliver automation programs, ICT components of bank projects and technical advice.
• Proactively identify data sources valuable to the bank’s business and automate its fetching, collating, aggregation, analysis, mining and MIS reporting so as to provide better insight of the various bank functions – such as channels, departments and the bank as a whole.
• Provide informed technical expertise, assessments and recommendations while exploiting emerging technologies.
• Execute the technical lead role on projects as they are assigned.
• Identify training needs for the Business Systems team, while establishing credibility, rapport, and productive communication lines with the teams in the ICT department.
• Manage productivity and cultivate beneficial relationships with 3rd party ICT partners.
• Ensure all system documentation is available, relevant and current.
• Lead the team in adherence to the bank’s policies and ensuring securing of systems

Qualifications And Experience

• A degree in computer science or related field.
• At least 5 years’ rich experience in the systems analysis, design and support.
• Proven skills in quality systems programming, web development, systems administration, database administration, services integration and secure connectivity across n-tier server architectures.
• Working knowledge of relational databases (Oracle, SQL Server, Postgress and Mysql). 
• Working knowledge of data modelling, analysis and visualisation tools

Personal Attributes

• Strong Analytical and Problem-solving skills with critical thinking ability.
• Good communication skills (written and verbal).
• Project management skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines.