We are looking for a Head of Operations to uphold the operational excellence of the SnapScan platform.
As Head of Operations, you will oversee the Operations, Customer Experience (CX), and Compliance & Onboarding Teams to ensure the smooth running of the SnapScan platform and ensure that our operational backend is robust and secure as we expand our product offering and establish new operational frameworks and broader payment acceptance.
The Operations, Compliance and Onboarding & CX Teams comprise a range of functions, including but not limited to fraud, compliance and risk management, financial operations (merchant settlements), payment operations, merchant onboarding, and customer support, that ensure that customer service levels are maintained in line with our strategic goals, as well as Bank SLAs.
This exciting position, reporting directly to our CEO, is key to enabling the company to continue to deliver quantifiable value to our customers and help craft the future of SnapScan. It also provides our ideal candidate with a fantastic opportunity to:
- be the central point of oversight for the most core functions of the business
- jump between contexts and develop a deep knowledge and understanding of the SnapScan platform, its customers and the offering
- experience dual business cultures and ways of working between Standard Bank and SnapScan
Reporting Structure: You will report to the CEO
Direct Reports:
- Customer Experience Manager
- Operations Manager
- Compliance & Onboarding Lead
The core responsibilities are detailed here but bear in mind that this is a very fluid and dynamic environment with a constantly changing set of challenges and opportunities.
Key responsibilities will include:
Strategy Design & Execution
- Being part of the Senior Manco team at SnapScan and contributing to the setting and execution of the company’s OKRs, operations strategy and culture
- Collaborating with the CEO in operations planning and scaling in line with company-wide strategy and goals
- Cascading the Operations Strategy to the Operations, Compliance and Onboarding, and CX Teams and translating the strategy into actionable goals for performance and growth
Stakeholder Management
- Communicating to relevant stakeholders on the monitoring, alerting, alarming, and uptime of the SnapScan payment service and related products, as well as overall service levels for customer support
- Ensuring robust operational and customer support efforts and workflows are designed, documented, communicated, and operationalised for all relevant stakeholders when new products or features are introduced into the SnapScan platform
Operational Excellence
- Being responsible for critical incident handling, driving for root cause analyses, handling incident remediation efforts, and setting up strategies for ensuring operational robustness measures to prevent future issues originating from SnapScan and/or suppliers as far as possible.
- Improving the operational flow of work between SnapScan, its payment service provider(s), and Standard Bank, as well as compiling and assessing the performance of our service providers in line with all SLAs
- In collaboration with Team Leads and Managers:
- ~Ensuring the availability of 7-day-a-week support/ops services (available over weekends and public holidays, emergency after-hours support etc.
- ~Ensuring transparency/job sharing within the greater Ops/Complince& Onboarding/CX team (especially for weekend / after-hours functions, but also to:
- ~~Decentralise institutional knowledge /avoid a situation where only 2 people know everything
- ~~Oversee onboarding of new team members as managed by team managers
- In collaboration with the Operations Manager:
- ~Overseeing the development and adaptation of appropriate fraud prevention strategies as the SnapScan merchant network grows and the product offering expands
- ~Developing and monitoring sound and efficient operational practices to limit other forms of risk (e.g. where daily merchant settlements, PCI and the reconciliation of payments are concerned)
- ~Holding third-party providers accountable for service delivery
- ~Ad hoc incident response management, e.g. in case of systems failure / other urgent or critical operational problems in collaboration with other leads and departments
- ~Ensuring that risk mitigation and growth objectives are balanced appropriately in all operational functions.
- ~Developing, documenting, and implementing new processes in response to the changing environment and requirements of the company.
- ~Being the final escalation point for system failures and ensuring 24/7 incident handling schedules are filled by the operations team, as appropriate.
- In collaboration with the Customer Experience Manager:
- ~Overseeing customer service operations and looking for ways to enhance customer retention
- ~Developing and adapting appropriate strategies for efficient query handling via phone, email and social media, including using data from different support channels to identify and reduce the number of recurring queries, e.g. by improved messaging/user education, team training, real-time payments monitoring etc.
- ~Ensuring response times are maintained at a level that serves the SnapScan product’s strategic interests and is in line with Standard Bank SLAs
- In collaboration with the Compliance Lead:
- ~Overseeing compliance and onboarding operations and looking for ways to enhance the conversation rate while maintaining adherence to industry regulations.
- ~Managing and ensuring adherence to the compliance and risk management plans, our regulatory universe and the remediation of any gaps found.
Leadership & People Management
With guidance from SnapScan’s Head of People
- Assisting your direct reports in scaling and adapting operations, and customer experience team structures in line with the company’s growth strategy.
- Coaching and growing the competencies and capabilities of your direct reports, engaging in succession planning, team design, and growth plans to achieve productivity and engagement
- Creating and cultivating a sustainable, healthy, inclusive, customer-centric culture within the teams ensuring that team members thrive, and deliverables are met
- Providing ad hoc tactical guidance and support to the Operations Manager, CX Manager and Compliance Lead when launching new features/products
Reporting & Metrics Management
- Evaluating performance by analysing and interpreting data and metrics
- Reporting on operational performance and putting forward improvements
Innovation & Continuous Improvement
- Identifying areas for Continuous Improvement and staying on top of new trends and developments in the fintech operations space
Compliance & Governance
- Ensuring that all Operations, Compliance and Onboarding, & CX practices adhere to regulatory, security & privacy requirements
This job may be for you if:
- You are relentless in your customer focus.
- You are organised, accurate and process-driven in how you get things done.
- You relate well to people and easily establish good working relationships across all functions and management levels, working collaboratively and independently.
- You’re level-headed and cool under pressure. When things change, you know how to roll with the punches.
- You are emotionally intelligent.
- You have a strong strategic mindset and are able to deal effectively with senior stakeholders
- You are adaptable and flexible to effectively deal with rapid changes occurring in the industry.
- Basically, you will blow us away with your work ethic, your passion, your integrity, your attitude and your energy!
You should be great at:
- Communication (both verbal & written)
- Team leadership, management and hiring
- Planning, organising and time management
- Analytical and critical thinking to help find creative solutions to problems
- Collaborating effectively with others, working in teams, building relationships, sharing ideas, resolving conflict
You are our ideal candidate if you have:
- A relevant bachelor's degree or professional certification/s
- Considerable experience in Operations Management and Leadership at a senior level, ideally within Fintech startups
- Industry knowledge and experience in Fintech & payments
- A successful track record in leading and developing effective, engaged and high-performing teams
- A proven ability to:
- ~Ensure robust ongoing operations of complex systems
- ~Set up monitoring, alerting and alarming for critical systems
- Sound knowledge and experience in:
- ~Leadership and coaching
- ~Process improvement, design and implementation
- Good understanding of data
- Some experience with regulatory compliance and risk management
- Bonus points for previous experience in:
- ~Scaling onboarding operations in line with company needs
- ~Managing platform migrations
- ~Remediation on customer accounts
- ~Exposure to fraud and setting up new fraud mitigation strategies
- ~Setting up operational flows for new payment types
- ~Working with product teams/BAs to map operational impacts and dependencies
- ~Query compilation and data analysis
The benefits of joining our team:
- A competitive salary
- 30 days of annual leave
- A medical aid contribution/fringe benefit of up to R2 000 per month
- An Apple MacBook and necessary gear
- A trendy office space (when in the office)
- Discretionary annual bonus
- Lots of opportunities to learn
- Flexible office/remote working - you get to choose whether you want to work remotely or from the office, depending on the importance of critical meetings
- Paid parking (when working from the office)
- 3 days of mental health leave a year
- The opportunity to be part of a great team and culture!
