About Kaelo
Kaelo provides essential healthcare solutions ensuring the physical and psychosocial wellbeing of all South Africans towards lasting social change. Kaelo meets the Healthcare needs of Corporate and Retail clients across South Africa – products offerings include Medical Insurance, Medical Aid, Gap Insurance, Kaelo Money and employee assistance programmes.

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Role Purpose

The Project Manager plans and delivers IT Operations projects from initiation through to implementation and close-out. Reporting to the Head of IT, the incumbent manages scope, timelines, project budgets and technology vendors across infrastructure, rollout, upgrade, site and business technology initiatives.

The role is hands-on delivery management rather than administration. The expectation is not simply to report that a project is running late, but to understand why, determine what needs to happen next, and bring internal teams, business stakeholders and external technology partners together to recover it.

Key Responsibilities

1. Project Initiation & Planning

• Define project scope, objectives, deliverables and success criteria with the Head of IT and business stakeholders.
• Develop and maintain project plans, timelines, milestones, resource requirements and dependencies.
• Select an Agile, Waterfall or hybrid delivery approach appropriate to each project.
• Ensure business readiness, testing and handover are planned into the schedule from the outset.

2. Delivery Management & Execution

• Manage IT and technology projects from initiation through planning, execution and implementation to close-out.
• Co-ordinate internal teams, site engineers, business stakeholders and external technology partners around each project.
• Manage multiple concurrent projects and competing priorities, holding people accountable for agreed actions and deadlines.
• Track progress against plan, identify variance early and take corrective action.

3. Project Budget & Financial Control

• Develop and manage project budgets, tracking committed and actual spend against approved amounts.
• Forecast cost to completion and report variance to the Head of IT before it becomes material.
• Ensure project-related purchasing is raised through IT procurement in partnership with the IT Desktop and Asset Admin.
• Maintain accurate project financial records for audit purposes.

4. Vendor & Technology Partner Delivery

• Manage technology vendors and service providers engaged on projects, including their scope, deliverables and milestones.
• Monitor vendor delivery against agreed commitments and escalate performance issues.
• Validate vendor deliverables before acceptance and sign-off.
• Ensure vendors working on projects meet Kaelo’s security and access requirements.

5. Risk, Issue & Dependency Management

• Maintain project risk, issue and dependency registers with owners, mitigations and escalation paths.
• Proactively drive risks and issues to resolution rather than simply reporting them.
• Escalate promptly and at the right level where a matter exceeds the project’s authority.
• Ensure changes delivered by projects follow the change management process and are evidenced.

6. Governance, Reporting & Handover

• Provide clear, honest project reporting to the Head of IT and business sponsors.
• Maintain project governance, documentation and decision records.
• Support implementation, business readiness and handover of solutions into operational use.
• Run project closure and lessons learned, and ensure the lessons change subsequent practice.

7. Alignment, Reporting & Escalation

• Align work to, and execute, the direction and strategy set by the IT Executive.
• Communicate progress and escalate issues and risks to the IT Executive, through the Head of IT where appropriate, promptly and transparently.

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Qualifications

• A relevant tertiary qualification in Information Technology, Information Systems, Business, Project Management or a related field.
• Project management certification (PMP, PRINCE2, Agile/Scrum or similar) advantageous; ITIL Foundation beneficial.

Experience

Essential

• Minimum 3–5 years’ experience in IT project management or technology project delivery.
• A track record of delivering technology projects to completion, such as infrastructure, rollout, systems implementation or upgrade projects.
• Experience managing project budgets and reporting on financial performance.
• Experience managing vendors and technology partners on project delivery.
• Experience managing multiple projects and competing priorities simultaneously.
• Experience working in Agile, Waterfall and/or hybrid delivery environments.

Preferred

• Experience delivering IT projects across multiple sites.
• Experience in financial services or another regulated industry.
• Exposure to ISO 27001 or equivalent change and audit requirements.
• Familiarity with project management tooling such as Jira, Azure DevOps or MS Project.

Technical Competencies

• IT Project Management — Initiation through to Close-Out
• Project Planning, Scheduling & Milestone Management
• Agile, Waterfall & Hybrid Delivery Approaches
• Project Budgeting, Forecasting & Variance Reporting
• Vendor & Technology Partner Delivery Management
• Risk, Issue & Dependency Management
• Project Governance & Delivery Reporting
• Business Readiness, Implementation & Handover
• Change Management Controls
• Project Management Tooling (Jira, Azure DevOps, MS Project)

Core Competencies

• Delivery Focus — converts plans into completed, adopted change.
• Ownership & Accountability — takes responsibility for outcomes and holds others to agreed actions.
• Problem Solving — understands why delivery is off track and determines what needs to happen next.
• Communication — conveys status, risk and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Resilience — stays composed and effective when plans are disrupted.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Delivery of projects against agreed scope, timeline, budget and deliverables.
• Project spend against approved budget, with variance identified early.
• Proportion of risks and issues resolved before they affect delivery.
• Vendor delivery performance against agreed commitments.
• Quality and timeliness of project reporting.
• Successful business readiness and handover of implemented solutions.

Regulatory, Risk & Information Security Responsibilities

• Comply with POPIA in the handling of personal and special personal information, including member health information, and with the Cybercrimes Act, reporting any suspected unlawful access or compromise without delay.
• Adhere to Kaelo information security policies and the frameworks the organisation aligns to, including FSCA Joint Standard 2 of 2024, ISO/IEC 27001, the CIS Controls and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
• Maintain the evidence required to support the ISMS and internal, external and certification audits within the area of responsibility.
• Escalate security incidents, control weaknesses and operational risks promptly, and complete all mandatory compliance and awareness training.

Personal Attributes

•       Accountability
•       Action orientated
•       Collaborative
•       Communication
•       Business writing skills
•       Manage complexity
•       Problem solving skills
•       Decision thinking
•       Encourages engagement
•       Resilient and adaptive
•       Resourceful
•       Demonstrates self-awareness
•       Purpose driven
•       Significance and values orientated