Lead Engagement Operations Engineer

Come join oneZero Financial Systems! An exciting, fast-growing company with Headquarters in Somerville, MA. oneZero empowers banks, brokerages and hedge funds with cutting edge trade routing and execution technology. Our platform, deployed with 200+ entities globally, features a low-latency trading environment, integrations to the world’s leading execution venues, and reliable IT infrastructure and technical support-all designed to be customized and scaled to serve any business model and any size of market participant. We take pride in our great work atmosphere and highly motivated team of engineers. We are currently looking for a motivated and talented Lead Engagement Operations Engineer to join our Johannesburg office.

oneZero earns recognition as a 2025 Best Place to Work - The Business Intelligence Group has named oneZero Financial Systems (oneZero) a 2025 Best Place to Work.

oneZero earns 2025 Great Place To Work Australia Certification™ - oneZero is proud to be Certified™ by Great Place To Work®

oneZero The Boston Globe Names oneZero a Top Place to Work for third year in a row

Job Purpose:

The individual is responsible for leading the Engagement Operations engineering function, driving strategic improvements to implementation processes. This role combines deep technical expertise across the entire Autochartist product suite with process ownership, and cross-functional collaboration at a senior level. The Lead acts as the primary escalation point for complex technical challenges, owns the quality framework for implementations, fostering strong relationships with customers, addressing their needs, and delivering tailored solutions to ensure their success. The individual is accountable for operational excellence and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Customer satisfaction, and long-term strategic success are the core focus of this role.

Duties:

Team Leadership & People Development:

• Set clear performance expectations and provide constructive feedback aligned with company competency frameworks.
• Foster a collaborative, high-performance team culture with accountability and psychological safety.

Strategic & Process Ownership:

• Own and continuously improve the end-to-end implementation methodology and quality assurance framework.
• Identify opportunities for automation, tooling improvements, and process optimization to scale operations.
• Partner with Product and Development leadership on roadmap input, feature prioritization, and technical feasibility.
• Prepare and drive standardization of documentation, and knowledge management practices.
• Represent the Engagement Operations function in cross-departmental planning, escalation management, and incident response.
• Contribute to strategic initiatives and OKRs at the department and organizational level.

Customer Implementations & Technical Leadership:

• Serve as the senior technical escalation point for complex or high-value customer implementations.
• Oversee and ensure quality of all customer implementations delivered by the team.
• Lead high-profile customer engagements and executive-level discussions.
• Provide architectural guidance on product configuration, integration patterns, and best practices.
• Drive post-implementation reviews and continuous improvement based on lessons learned.
• Coordinate with development teams on tooling requirements, feature requests, and bug prioritization.

Stakeholder Management & Communication:

• Act as the point of contact between Engagement Operations and senior leadership, and Account Management.
• Provide regular reporting on project status, risks, and capacity.
• Manage expectations with internal and external stakeholders at a strategic level.
• Drive cross-functional alignment on delivery priorities.
• Prioritise broker support tickets to ensure brokers are not impacted by products not working.
• Respond to End-User tickets that are related to Quality of Service (QoS).

Required Skills:

• IT-orientated and technology-savvy with deep technical understanding.
• Strong strategic thinking with the ability to translate business objectives into operational plans.
• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
• Software implementation and project management expertise.
• Strong understanding of SQL (PGSQL, MYSQL) and ability to guide others on data-driven troubleshooting.
• Experience with process improvement methodologies and operational excellence frameworks.
• Bachelor of Commerce Degree or Bachelor of Science Degree - Both IT Focused.

Details of Experience:

• A minimum of 5-7 years in customer-facing technical operations or implementation roles.
• At least 2 years of direct technical lead experience.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder projects end-to-end.
• Strong track record working with international enterprise customers.
• Experience in financial markets, fintech, or trading technology environments.
• Proven ability to drive process improvements that deliver measurable operational gains.

Attractive Skills:

• Strong strategic and analytical thinking.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and able to create structure where none exists.
• Excellent conflict resolution and negotiation skills.
• Data-driven decision-making mindset.
• Ability to balance operational excellence with innovation and experimentation.
• Strong executive presence and communication skills.
• Organized, with exceptional time management and prioritization at both individual and team level.
• Passion for customer success and continuous improvement.
• Proactive risk identification and mitigation at a portfolio/program level.
• Display professional business etiquette.
• Self-starter who can both define vision and execute on details.
• Attention to detail and a passion for accuracy.
• Team Player.
• Ability to work under pressure.

Location

• Hybrid role, based in Johannesburg South Africa.
• Fast-paced and driven environment
• Driver’s license and own transport are essential