IT Applications Delivery Manager

Purpose

The IT Applications Delivery Manager is responsible for the successful delivery, continuous improvement, and operational excellence of assigned business applications. This role acts as a value-enabling partner to Business Owners, ensuring business needs are clearly translated into deliverable outcomes.

You will own the technical delivery pipeline, including DevOps practices such as CI/CD automation, environment readiness, and production support. The goal is to deliver fit-for-purpose, scalable, and secure applications that evolve continuously with business needs.

Functional Duties and Responsibilities

Application Delivery Leadership

• Lead end-to-end application delivery from ideation to production.
• Manage cross-functional teams including analysts, developers, QA engineers, and vendors.
• Develop and maintain product delivery roadmaps aligned with business priorities.
• Define, implement, and govern the SDLC using Agile and DevOps practices.
• Monitor performance and provide delivery reporting to stakeholders.

Partnership & Co-Ownership

• Serve as a co-product owner with Business Owners.
• Prioritise features with stakeholders, balancing value, risk, and feasibility.
• Define value metrics, MVP scope, and acceptance criteria.
• Govern lifecycle activities: stakeholder validation, feedback incorporation, and roadmap evolution.
• • Support budgeting, forecasting, and resource planning.
  • Maintain the product backlog and delivery roadmap.

  DevOps Engineering & Platform Delivery

  • Own and govern the CI/CD pipeline, build automation, and deployment processes.
  • Enforce modern engineering practices:
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
  • Automated testing and quality gates
  • Secure release automation
  • Govern deployment operations:
  • Rollback procedures
  • Monitoring and incident triage
  • Operational readiness
  • Ensure infrastructure alignment (cloud-native/hybrid environments).

  Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)

  • Govern the full lifecycle: design, deploy, support, and decommission.
  • Manage:
    • Versioning and change control
    • Patch management
    • Handover and documentation
    • End-of-life readiness

  External Developer & Partner Management

  • Act as the primary liaison and performance manager for outsourced teams and solution partners.
  • Establish and manage:
    • SLAs and milestones
    • Onboarding and integration quality
    • Continuous improvement processes
  • Evaluate partner performance and resolve blockers or quality issues.

  Stakeholder Engagement & Delivery Governance

  • Lead structured stakeholder engagement:
    • Demo sessions
    • UAT planning
    • Backlog and roadmap reviews
  • Implement governance mechanisms:
    • Risk and issue tracking
    • Escalation protocols
  • Report on:
    • Delivery progress and metrics
    • Application health and incident trends
    • DevOps maturity and technical risk
    • Budget and vendor performance
  • Lead Quarterly Business Reviews or formal steering meetings as needed.

  Continuous Improvement & Quality Assurance

  • Champion Agile and Lean practices.
  • Lead:
    • Retrospectives and improvement planning
    • Delivery KPIs (DORA, lead time, defect rates)
    • Root cause analysis and improvement loops

  Compliance, Security & Governance

  • Ensure all practices align with policies and regulatory frameworks.
  • Govern:
  • Audit logging and traceability
  • Security scanning and application controls
  • Collaborate with risk/security teams to align with POPIA, CIS, NIST, etc.

  NB:   The responsibilities contained in this document are not exhaustive and management reserves the right to instruct the employee to carry out additional duties or responsibilities which may fall reasonably within the ambit of the position profile or in accordance with operational requirements.

• Core Skills

  • Strategic thinker with strong delivery discipline
  • Systems thinking and analytical mindset
  • Strong collaboration across business and technical teams
  • Resilience and comfort with ambiguity
  • Growth mindset and continuous learning attitude
  • Clear, confident communication with technical and executive audiences
  • Strong prioritisation and organisational skills

• Strategic Purpose & Value

  This role will act as the metaphorical “COO” of all applications and systems — responsible for developing, maintaining, improving, and rolling out systems across the business, this position is also expected to create strategic roadmaps and drive DevOps maturity within the first 6-month success = Progress in DevOps metrics and process maturity and 12-month success = Roadmaps for major applications, Odoo delivery, and warehouse app/automation rollout.

   

  Scope & Boundaries

  Responsible for all IT systems, including leading the rollout of new systems. Not responsible for operational support (e.g., bug fixing, KPI tracking) of existing systems — this sits outside the scope.

   

  Team & Structure

  Will initially lead the Business Analyst, with a Scrum Master joining in future phases and will also manage and guide external development resources.

   

  Stakeholder Relationships

  Key stakeholders include internal Project Owners and external Service Providers and strong collaboration will be needed across business functions.

   

  Leadership & Influence

  This is a senior leadership role with expected engagement at SLT level. 

  Technical Competencies

  Qualifications / Certificates

  Education: Bachelor’s in Computer Science / IS / Engineering; Master’s advantageous Agile/Product: CSPO, SAFe PO/PM, PSM Project Delivery: PMP, Prince2, AgilePM, ICAgile DevOps/Engineering: AWS/Azure DevOps, Docker, Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD), Terraform Governance: ITIL 4, COBIT 2019

  Work Experience

  Product Ownership: Experience managing backlogs, MVPs, and value streams Application Delivery: 8+ years’ end-to-end delivery, including support Agile/Stakeholder Management: Skilled in UATs, demos, backlog reviews DevOps Engineering: CI/CD, IaC (Terraform), Docker, Kubernetes, deployment strategies Governance & Security: Familiar with SAST/DAST, change control, compliance Leadership & Influence: Coaching teams, making delivery trade-offs, engaging stakeholders