Specialist: Service Level Agreements and SRM

About the role

Empowering Africa's tomorrow, together...one story at a time. With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group. Job Summary To lead, plan, manage and optimise the implementation of strategic contractual, supplier relationship, and service level management activities across high-value and business-critical Digital engagements. The role is accountable for ensuring that Digital contracts and supplier partnerships deliver measurable commercial value, mitigate risk, and support Absa's strategic objectives, while maintaining strong governance and regulatory compliance. This role requires a specialist with proven experience managing flagship customer-facing supplier contracts (exceeding R100m+), driving commercial negotiations in collaboration with procurement and legal teams, and influencing executive stakeholders. Job Description Contract management Ensure that contracts are proactively managed and renewed ahead of expiry, particularly for large-scale, flagship, complex and high-value contracts exceeding R100m. Engage executives and business stakeholders to define requirements and drive sourcing strategies. Lead the structuring, and negotiation of complex contractual agreements, ensuring optimal commercial outcomes while mitigating legal, procurement, operational and regulatory risks. Collaborate closely with Legal and Procurement to structure multi-year, multi-vendor and strategic agreements. Drive contract optimisation through re-negotiations, benchmarking, and continuous commercial improvement. Manage contract amendments in response to regulatory changes, transformation initiatives, and evolving business needs, ensuring contracts remain fit for purpose. Oversee supplier terminations and exit strategies for critical vendors, ensuring minimal disruption to business operations. Provide expert advisory input into RFX processes, influencing sourcing decisions for strategically significant spend categories. Supplier Relationship Management: Own and manage strategic and flagship supplier relationships, ensuring alignment to Absa's commercial, operational and risk objectives. Design and implement robust SRM frameworks, including governance structures, exit strategies, performance scorecards, and engagement models at both operational and executive levels. Lead executive-level supplier engagements, including Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and service review meetings, driving accountability, performance, and continuous improvement. Proactively identify opportunities to unlock additional value, innovation, and cost efficiencies from suppliers. Ensure comprehensive supplier lifecycle management, including due diligence, onboarding, ongoing assurance, and exit planning, in line with procurement and risk requirements. Act as an escalation point for complex supplier disputes, performance failures, and commercial disagreements. Attend to records management of Supplier Relationship Management artefacts to ensure that they always remain up to date and readily available. Support Supplier Assurance reviews, audits, and regulatory assessments as required. SLA Management: Lead the design and implementation of robust, enterprise-wide service level management frameworks across complex service environments. Develop, review, and maintain SLAs and underpinning agreements that include clearly defined KPIs, service measures, and commercial levers such as service credits and penalties. Drive rigorous performance monitoring and governance, including regular service reviews, root cause analysis, and formal remediation processes for underperformance. Enforce contractual obligations through service credit claims, breach management, and escalation to Group Legal where required. Manage escalations relating to critical service failures, invoicing disputes, and unresolved operational incidents, ensuring timely resolution and minimal business impact. Continuously enhance SLA frameworks to align with evolving business and technology requirements. Ensure appropriate governance, management information and reporting: Establish and maintain strong governance frameworks for contract and supplier performance management. Deliver high-quality, executive-level reporting and insights on supplier performance, commercial outcomes (savings & cost avoidances), and risk exposure. Monitor operational plans and ensure that relevant, accurate management information is produced to measure performance against strategic targets, KPIs, and scorecards. Ensure full compliance with internal policies, regulatory requirements, and audit standards. Stakeholder Management: Engage and influence a wide range of complex relationship management of stakeholders, including senior leadership and executive stakeholders, across Legal, Procurement, R