Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, a vacancy exists at Toyota Connected Africa (TCA) in Sandton. The successful candidate will establish and lead TCA's in-house mobile application development team, take ownership of the customer-facing mobile application from the current external development partner, and deliver secure, high-quality digital solutions that shorten time-to-market for customers in South Africa and other African markets.
KEY PERFORMANCE AREAS:
Establish and lead the in-house mobile development team.
Drive Agile delivery practices, including sprint planning, backlog management, estimation, code reviews, and release activities.
Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines to support efficient, reliable, and scalable application delivery.
Leverage AI-assisted development tools and practices to improve productivity, quality, and delivery outcomes.
Own the handover of the mobile application from the current external development partner.
Manage the API and release boundary with the partner that continues to develop the platform and web applications.
Manage engineering-capacity vendors: statements of work, performance and escalations.
Uphold architecture, code-quality, security and data-privacy standards within the team.
Manage App Store and Google Play submission, release and monitoring processes.
Turn business demand into a deliverable roadmap with the Business Analyst, QA Engineer, UI/UX Designer and business teams.
Monitor and report on project delivery, key milestones, risks, issues, and resource requirements to the CTO and executive leadership.
Mentor, coach, and develop team members through ongoing support, performance management, and skills development initiatives.
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
NQF Level 6 (minimum 360 credits on level 8 framework) qualification in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline.
Project management certification (PMP, PRINCE2 or equivalent) and Agile / Scrum certification (PSM, CSM, SAFe or equivalent).
Minimum 7 years' experience in software / IT, of which 5 years managing development projects or teams through the full lifecycle.
Minimum 3 years' experience managing outsourced development partners or vendors, including statements of work and performance.
Working knowledge of the iOS and Android platforms and of App Store and Google Play release processes.
Sound understanding of the software development lifecycle, CI/CD and quality assurance.
Experience of delivering consumer-facing applications and of reporting at executive level.
Hands-on software development experience, and practical use of AI-assisted development tooling, will be an advantage.
Mobile application delivery experience (iOS / Android, Flutter) or server-side development experience will be an advantage.
Experience of establishing a new team or engineering process from scratch will be an advantage.
COMPETENCIES:
Accurate information gathering and analysis.
Awareness and commitment to our mission.
Awareness of situations and decisiveness.
Communication and sharing of mid to long term plans.
Creation of innovative vision.
Establishing framework and systems for organisational learning.
Feedback of evaluation results and long-term development of others.
Perseverance.
Strategic reallocation of resources and review of work methods.
Suitable assignment and objective performance review.
IMPORTANT DIMENSIONS:
Self-starter, able to build process where none exists.
Planning and organising.
Data gathering, analysis and interpretation.
Stakeholder management and negotiation.
Occasional international travel is required.
May be required to work outside normal hours for releases and critical production incidents, and to co-ordinate across Asia-Pacific time zones.