Senior Technical Lead - FTS

Sr. Technical Lead - FTS (m,f,d)

ID: 290735

Location: Ratingen

Role purpose: 
As a member of the Regulated Managed Services (RMS) team, this role contributes to the secure, compliant, and resilient delivery of critical application services for regulated and government customers. The role supports Vodafone's commitment to meet stringent regulatory, security, and operational requirements across highly sensitive environments. 

The Senior Technical Lead is accountable for the implementation and evolution, operational stability, performance, security, and continuous improvement of Vodafone's Platinum Regulated Managed File Transfer (MFT)-/ Conversion Products.  

Acts as the technical and operational authority for the Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products and is accountable for service reliability, operational risk, security controls, access governance, audit readiness, lifecycle management, automation, ensures business-critical file transfer services remain highly available and continuous improvement across highly sensitive customer and government environments. The role provides new solution concepts and technical roadmaps based on customer, service, network and security requirements.
The role works closely with Senior Customer contacts, Product Engineers, Architects, Security teams, Service Management, Finance and Application Support teams to deliver operational excellence across the entire service lifecycle, all in a very complex international scope. Effective Vendor involvement and steering is required to execute the role.
The Senior Technical Lead is an active part of the design authority to deliver significant improvements across the Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products estate, shaping new demands, aligning it to the target architecture.
For Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products, the role defines and governs operating models for data sovereignty, regional processing restrictions, GDPR and customer-specific access requirements, including restricted support, privileged access and compliance evidence. Provides technical direction across the full service lifecycle.
Accountable for release governance, change strategy, security compliance, and incident leadership across the Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products, ensuring risks are mitigated and business-critical services remain secure, resilient, and stable.

Commercial Control/ Steering:
Accountable for the commercial control of Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products, balancing service quality, customer outcomes, financial performance, investment priorities and cost optimisation. Shapes and evolves commercial models, and business cases to ensure long-term service viability, value creation, and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.
AI-driven service optimisation:
Drives the adoption of AI-enabled and data-driven operational practices, leveraging predictive analytics, intelligent automation and AI-assisted decision support to accelerate issue resolution, enhance service resilience, and optimise operational efficiency beyond traditional support models.
The role carries a significantly broader accountability than traditional IT Operations by integrating regulatory governance, commercial control, and AI-driven service optimisation into end-to-end service ownership.

What you’ll do

Key accountabilities and decision ownership: 
Service Operations
•    Own the end-to-end operational accountability for the Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products, ensuring service performance, stability, scalability, resilience, availability and regulatory compliance.
•    Define and govern Service KPIs, monitoring frameworks, recovery procedures, continuity standards and operational controls for business-critical MFT platforms.
•    Provide technical leadership during Major Incidents, acting as the highest operational escalation point and coordinating cross-functional recovery activities to minimise business impact.
•    Lead Problem Management activities through Root Cause Analysis (RCA), trend analysis and implementation of permanent corrective and preventive measures.
•    Ensure proactive Service Management and maintenance through capacity planning, performance optimisation, health assessments, observability, operational readiness reviews for critical production services.
•    Lead strategic engagement with customers and stakeholders to shape Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Product capabilities, translating business demand into scalable, secure, robust, future-proof and commercially viable solutions that support Vodafone’s strategic objectives, transformation roadmap, and operational goals.
•    On-call support
Automation & Continuous Improvement
•    Drive continuous improvement initiatives focused on operational efficiency, reliability, automation, resilience and service quality, always considering RMS aspects 
•    Identify automation opportunities and operational efficiencies.
•    Develop scripts and tools for operational support and monitoring.
•    Drive reduction of manual activities and operational risk.
•    Support CI/CD and DevOps initiatives where applicable.

Security, Risk, Compliance and Data Governance
•    Accountable for operational compliance and governance within RMS of Regulated MFT-/ Conversion Products, ensuring adherence to Vodafone, customer, contractual, and regulatory requirements. Acts as the operational authority for access governance, data protection, audit readiness, compliance control effectiveness, segregation-of-duty, and data sovereignty. Maintains the RMS Operational Manual and ensures operational processes remain compliant with evolving legal, regulatory, customer, and security obligations.
•    Lead risk investigation, mitigation and remediation. Steering activities across: security, privacy, operational resilience, service continuity, and regulatory compliance domains.
•    Provide recommendations to influence service acceptance, sourcing strategies, capacity planning, support models, and investment decisions, balancing business requirements, operational risk, cost efficiency, and compliance obligations.

Platform Ownership, Modernisation & Change Governance
•    Own the end-to-end technical lifecycle of the Regulated MFT-/ Conversion platform, including operational governance, upgrades, migrations, capacity planning, technology renewals and strategic modernisation initiatives.
•    Lead the planning and execution of software releases, infrastructure changes, and platform transformations while ensuring service continuity and operational resilience.
•    Assess change implementation risks, define mitigation approaches & plans, and provide technical leadership within CAB and change governance forums.
•    Ensure platform -configurations, -standards, and operational processes remain compliant, secure, and aligned with business regulatory and customer requirements.
•    Govern and maintain technical documentation, operational procedures, and platform standards to ensure sustainable service operations and future platform evolution.

Vendor & Stakeholder Management
•    Lead engagement with external vendors, suppliers, support partners, and ensuring alignment with operational, compliance, and business objectives.
•    Manage vendor escalations and drive timely resolution of service-impacting issues
•    Act as a trusted technical advisor to project teams and internal stakeholders, influencing solution design and delivery decisions to fulfil complex integration requirements and successfully onboard customers.

Financial Management & Control
•    Lead the continuous re-assessment and evolution of cost-, capacity-, sourcing- and support-model scenarios to provide professional operations recommendation for investment and decision making. 
•    Navigate through complex financial and commercial change approval processes, developing business cases, validating cost models, securing multi-level approvals, and ensuring compliance with contractual, financial, and service catalogue requirements.
•    Financial reporting & controlling:
•    Own and maintain service-related financial reporting to ensure correct quantity and revenue results, including automation- and analytic- data model design to shape service enhancements, identify optimization opportunities and drive cost efficiencies."
•    Observe global market trends and evolve the product accordingly to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Who you are

Must have professional qualifications: 
•    University degree or higher education in IT, engineering or related fields and compatible professional experience. 
•    ITIL Foundation or preferably Service Management Certification
•    Knowledge and Experience in usage of AI capabilities 
•    Coaching capabilities
•    MFT, B2B integration, and electronic data interchange standards.
•    Enterprise infrastructure, cloud, virtualization, networking, and security architecture.
•    Application integration frameworks, APIs, databases, and identity services.
•    Automation, scripting (Perl/ Shell/ Python), and advanced troubleshooting of complex integration platforms.
•    Solution Life Cycle Management.
•    Troubleshooting skills for issues related to e.g. network, server-misconfigurations, product-bugs.   

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

Service Management, Ownership & Operational Governance
•    10+ years of experience in IT 
•    5+ years in Application Operations Management or a comparable role, preferably within MFT or Data Conversion Services (e.g. EDIFACT, e-invoicing).
•    Proven track record in end-to-end Service Ownership, and lifecycle management of business-critical IT Services and Products.
•    Extensive experience in operational governance such as managing incident, problem, change, capacity, availability, continuity, and service resilience processes, including leadership of major incident response, escalation management, and root cause analysis.
•    Strong knowledge of operational risk management, disaster recovery, regulatory compliance, and service assurance frameworks in complex enterprise environments.
Technical Architecture, Transformation & Innovation
•    Comprehensive expertise in system architecture, service design, integration, deployment, and lifecycle management of large-scale, highly complex IT services and products across multinational environments.
•    Strong operational experience managing solutions with demanding requirements for security, scalability, resilience, availability, and performance.
•    Experience in application modernization, automation, operational optimization, and large-scale service transformation initiatives preferable also cloud migration.
•    Ability to translate emerging technologies, market developments, and industry trends into practical service enhancements, innovation opportunities, and portfolio growth.
•    Deep understanding and practical application of industry frameworks and methodologies, including ITIL, Agile, Scrum, and SAFe, to drive operational excellence and Continuous Service Improvement.

Commercial-, Financial-, Vendor Management
•    Deep expertise in budget planning, financial control, cost optimization, and commercial management within product and service-based organizations.
•    Established experience in business case development, cost control, customer consumption management, financial forecasting, and revenue optimization to ensure achievement of financial targets and sustainable service profitability.
•    Strong vendor and supplier governance experience, including strategic relationship management, performance reviews, contract compliance, SLA management, and executive-level escalation handling.
Leadership, Influence & Stakeholder Engagement
•    Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence technical experts, senior leaders, vendors, and cross-functional teams; across all interconnecting Vodafone- and external parties. 
•    Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and decision-making capabilities, with the ability to lead complex operational challenges in high-pressure environments.
•    Demonstrated ability to adapt communication and leadership styles to diverse audiences while building alignment and driving outcomes.

Personal & People Development 
Self-Development
•    Role model by driving own development plan, focus on team and individual development. 
•    Actively develops his own strengths, skills, and expertise to realize full potential.

Off-Shore Team Development
•    Strong leadership experience in building, developing, and mentoring high-performing teams within international and multicultural environments.
•    Acts as a role model for continuous learning and professional development, fostering individual growth, capability building, and succession readiness aligned to business strategy.

Belonging at Vodafone isn't a concept; it's lived, breathed, and cultivated through everything we do. You'll be part of a global and diverse community, with many different minds, abilities, backgrounds and cultures. We're committed to increase diversity, ensure equal representation, and make Vodafone a place everyone feels safe, valued and included. 
If you require any reasonable adjustments or have an accessibility request as part of your recruitment journey, for example, extended time or breaks in between online assessments, please refer to https://careers.vodafone.com/application-adjustments/ for guidance. 

Not a perfect fit? 
Worried that you don’t meet all the desired criteria exactly? At Vodafone we are passionate about Inclusion for All and creating a workplace where everyone can thrive, whatever their personal or professional background. If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align exactly with every part of the job description, we encourage you to apply as you may be the right candidate for this role or another role, and our recruitment team can help you see how your skills fit in.

This position can be filled part- or full-time.
Your strengths and experience count at Vodafone. We also value diversity and equal opportunities. We therefore welcome applications from people with disabilities and will give them special consideration if they are equally qualified.

We are filling this position at Ratingen for Vodafone Group Services GmbH.
Would you like to get an overview of all our benefits and opportunities at Vodafone? You can find all the information on myHR.

Technology by and for people - it makes everything possible. As part of Vodafone, we support you in a career that pays off. In every respect.

It starts with you.
It starts now.