THOPOLA JOSEPH MAKGOTLHO
Senior Development Manager
Crowthone
Summary
A senior manager that is commercial driven to digital transformation, operational excellence and innovation in multinational corporates environments, specialising across insurance, banking, logistics. I have been an integral leader in the planning strategy and product roadmaps. I have excellent understanding of business requirements and financial management which have assisted me in vendor management, budgeting, and cost analyses. I am accountable for the overall management of channels in Stockbroking and Nedbank Africa Regions. I have worked with diverse teams of multiple personalities and skills with the aim of having a common culture of delivering strong performance and continuous learning.
Overview
13
13
years of professional experience
Work History
Senior Development Manager
Nedbank
01.2023 - Current
- Responsible for the day-to-day IT operations in both Nedbank Africa Region and Stockbroking through implementation of project initiatives while maintaining multiple channels in Africa and Stockbroking.
- Oversee IT operations in Nedbank Africa Region and Stockbroking with assets that includes IT infrastructure, cybersecurity.
- Drove modernisation program of identifying legacy applications and coordinating engagements between relevant technology and business stakeholders to ensure that a strategic replacement roadmap is deployed successful with minimum impact to the customers.
- Lead the team to successful implementation of NAR regulatory changes from the respective country’s reserve bank or governments before the cutoff date.
- Introduced modernization initiative of legacy applications and coordinated between technology and business stakeholders, ensuring a strategic replacement roadmap was implemented successfully with minimal customer impact which would have resulted with penalties being enforced towards the bank.
- Support in the tracking of the actual against the budget and manage within time, budget and quality constraints.
- Maintain relationships with IT vendors in NAR and Stockbroking and ensure that they fulfil their contractual obligations.
- Implement the cloud migration strategy across the NAR and Stockbroking environments. The roadmap is at currently 50 % completion which has immensely improved the efficiency and system availability of the applications.
- Lead long-range planning with industry leaders, product management, and software development processes.
- Oversee NAR Money App & Web technical development by allocating the most skilled resources and adopting utilizing of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
- Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, industry standards, and best practices for data privacy, security, and governance
- Responsible for the allocating of budget, prioritisation, acquiring of infrastructure and execution of disaster recovery in NAR. The establishment of disaster recovery was nonexistence my team was able to motivate and deliver the project towards completion.
- Negotiated annual review of vendor contracts and contractors. During the negotiation managed to achieve saving of departmental budget.
- Producing monthly financial reports of the portfolios and regions which includes the commercial value of the business.
- Expertly manage the annual NAR budget of R20 M and a team of over 50 + professionals and provide budget focus for the next financial year.
- Key Achievements
- Successfully led the team to implement the configuration of NAR system in Zimbabwe to do currency conversion from ZWL to Zig
- Eliminated the risk of key man dependency in Stockbroking by mentoring junior developers, automaton of manual processes and recruitment new talent.
Software Manager
KORRIDOR
01.2020 - 01.2023
- Brought on to deliver and manage market growth for cloud and logistics consultancy firm for warehouse industry companies.
- Developed and executed IT strategies in Korridor to ensure seamless service delivery of and operational excellence of Korridor App in Africa.
- Build and mentored project teams that will operative in an collaborative environment that encourage innovation and accountability.
- Implemented training materials for new resources, to achieve seamless onboarding of developers, testers and business analysts.
- Responsible for the implementing the IT budget and forecast of the next financial year, followed by monthly tracking of the costs.
- Established strong relationship with third-party service providers to ensure that there is a collaborative environment and smooth integration of applications.
- Generating control measures of identifying potential risks and develop mitigation strategies to minimise disruptions. in Korridor.
- Collaborating with the Domain Architecture in the solution design of new products and services to conforms to the Korridor’s quality standards.
- Strategized implementation plans, estimating effort, and cost and managing progress: mitigating risks and resolve issues throughout the project life cycle of multiple projects. Employing SAFe Agile methodologies as a major tool for delivering the new products.
- Key Achievements
- Oversaw the redesign a monolithic architecture into an enterprise architecture that improved customer satisfaction by having improved system stability and availability. The number of incidents reduced by 40 % due t have a more resilient application.
- Successfully led the team with the release of a Know Your Customer project that assisted in ensuring that the organisation is compliant on AML/CFT.
Team Manager: Business Applications
AVBOB
01.2020 - 01.2020
- Drove digital transformation through the development and maintenance of AVBOB’s enterprise systems. The digital transformation modernised their applications which improved customer experience. Instrumental in leading and planning IT infrastructure and strategic operations.
- Design and improvement of IT Architecture for applications
- Participate in the development and recruitment of IT resources.
- Plan the implementation of new systems and provide guidance to IT professionals and other staff within the organization
- Responsible for training and gathering learning materials for Avbob Developers
- Achieve continuous improvement by recommending new technologies such as NgRx, Docker, CQRS, Event Sourcing, etc.
- Recommending the purchase of new software’s and hardware’s to management and Chief Information Officers
- Provider leadership for the development and implementation for new IT applications such as the Broker Management Web Application.
- Designing and customizing technological systems and platforms to improve customer experience
- Drive performance objectives during development which focus speed, quality, flexibility, dependability and costs
- Introducing agile framework and methodologies to create traction of adoption of Agile in Avbob.
- Assist infrastructure teams with network and data security.
- Reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary commercial software that are available in the open source.
- Initiated the strategy of migrating legacy application to DevOps.
- Key Achievements
- Improved development speed by employing new Angular framework that increased code quality which reduced the number of production incidents.
Team Leader
CLIENTELE
01.2018 - 01.2020
- Oversee the IT infrastructure and design in Clientele’s finance and payments systems.
- Directed all operation for service outreach and product demonstrations.
- Designed and led development of a highly scalable, distributed, cloud-service platform, utilizing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
- Develop and communicate Clientele’s IT vision and strategy by also aligning with the business goals and objectives.
- Implemented DevOps configuration and maintenances of new micro services.
- Key Achievements
- Successful migration of Debit Order Mandate systems to latest technology which included development, stakeholder management, cyber security and infrastructure design.
Team Leader
FNB
01.2017 - 01.2018
- Key resource in the modernisation and transformation of FNB Wealth and Investments systems after the merge with Ashburton. The modernisation contained having skills in data management, cybersecurity and digital transformation.
- Daily operation risk identification and ensuring that the IT solutions and bug fixes are aligned to the risk appetite provided by business strategies.
- Manage own and team development to increase personal skill and performance.
- Development of software patches and management of information security risk considerations from the IT security officer.
- Training of junior developers and initiating learning sessions with team members on new technologies.
- Working in collaboration with portfolio managers and asset managers in the development of the investment application.
- Ensuring that our software applications are aligned to business ‘s current strategies and goals.
- Improving code coverage of the front end which is developed in Angular 6 and back-end system developed in C#
- Exceptional knowledge of FNB ‘s current architecture to assist in maintenance, design of new systems and participate in design meetings for discussing long term strategies.
- Assisting business analysts in the gathering of IT requirements that are aligned to business.
- Development of sustainable long-term relationship with key stakeholders in the wealth and management space.
- DevOps implementation for the Angular applications focusing on continuous development and automatic testing
- Key Achievements
- Part of a team of developers, business analyst, project manager and testers that achieved a redesign of FNB stockbroking and portfolio management website.
- Due to the evolving of technology, I was responsible for upgrading their application from AngularJS to Angular 5. Then progressed the language further to Angular 7.
- Created an initiative for developing training program for junior developers. The program included learning microservices architecture, angular, unit testing and docker.
Team Leader
HOLLARD
01.2016 - 01.2017
- Senior software consultant that was instrumental in the digital transformation of Hollard’s systems that improved customer experience.
- Leading the team responsible for the development of insurance mathematical models for estimating vehicle premiums. Collaborated with actuarial scientist in interpreting their models and converting them to software models.
- Worked closely with stakeholders during the infrastructure and implementation of new security solutions for new applications constructed by my team.
- Coaching, mentoring and technical leadership of delivery teams which consists of testers, business analysts, developers, etc.
- Lead the team for development of Web based application for managing vehicle insurance.
- Improved system performance by adhering to development standard
- Generating progress reports to stakeholders using data analytics or business intelligence tools.
- Key Achievements
- The first team to transform the customer service web applications from legacy front end technology to latest languages like Angular.
Senior Software Developer
InQuba
01.2014 - 01.2016
Developer
IQ Business
01.2013 - 01.2014
Education
Meng - Masters in Engineering
Wits University
AWS Solution Architecture - In Progress
UDEMY
01.2025
Management Accelerator - Adaptability and Resilience
McKinsey Academy
01.2024
MBA - Business and Finance
Wits Business School
01.2023
PGD - Diploma in Business Administration
Business and Finance
01.2020
Bsc Eng - Software Engineering
Wits University
01.2008
Skills
- AI & Machine Learning Applications in Finance
- Capital Raising
- Strategic Planning & Oversight
- Product Development
- Business Acumen
- Cyber Security
- Vendor Management & Stakeholder Management
- Leadership & Team Building
- Market Insights
- Digital Strategy
- Regulatory Compliance
References
Kgang, Moloke, Delivery Lead, (073) 236 6243, IQ Business
Timeline
Senior Development Manager
Nedbank
01.2023 - Current
Software Manager
KORRIDOR
01.2020 - 01.2023
Team Manager: Business Applications
AVBOB
01.2020 - 01.2020
Team Leader
CLIENTELE
01.2018 - 01.2020
Team Leader
FNB
01.2017 - 01.2018
Team Leader
HOLLARD
01.2016 - 01.2017
Senior Software Developer
InQuba
01.2014 - 01.2016
Developer
IQ Business
01.2013 - 01.2014
AWS Solution Architecture - In Progress
UDEMY
Management Accelerator - Adaptability and Resilience
McKinsey Academy
MBA - Business and Finance
Wits Business School
PGD - Diploma in Business Administration
Business and Finance
Bsc Eng - Software Engineering
Wits University
Meng - Masters in Engineering
Wits University