Chief Technology Officer

Company Description Gole Cloud, founded in 2025, provides end-to-end managed and professional IT services across VPS and web hosting, cloud storage, BaaS, DRaaS, IaaS, SaaS, cybersecurity, and Microsoft licensing. The company serves individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, and enterprises focused on the “Africanisation of Technology.” Gole Cloud delivers integrated solutions that help clients modernize their infrastructure, secure their environments, and optimize performance. Team members join a growing organization that values innovation, regional impact, and customer-centric service.

Role Description Gole Cloud provides IaaS / PaaS / managed private and hybrid cloud / backup and disaster recovery / colocation services to enterprise, public sector, and financial services clients across South Africa and the SADC region. Clients choose a local provider for data sovereignty, POPIA compliance, low latency, and responsive support, while competing offerings from global hyperscalers now operate in-country regions.

The CTO will position Gole Cloud's platform to win on those strengths: sovereign, resilient, and cost-competitive cloud, with credible hybrid and multi-cloud integration with the hyperscalers. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical credibility, and carries executive accountability for uptime, security, and technology spend.

Key responsibilities

Technology strategy and roadmap

• Define and execute a 3–5 year technology strategy aligned to the Gole Cloud's growth and profitability targets.
• Own the product and platform roadmap with the CPO/Commercial team: compute, storage, networking, backup/DR, containers and Kubernetes, AI/GPU infrastructure, and managed services.
• Shape the hybrid and multi-cloud proposition, including interconnects and partnerships with hyperscalers operating in South Africa.
• Evaluate build, buy, and partner decisions; manage strategic vendor relationships VMware/Broadcom alternatives, H3C, Sangfor, OpenStack, hardware OEMs, network carriers).

Platform, infrastructure, and operations

• Ensure availability, performance, and scalability of the cloud platform against contracted SLAs.
• Oversee data centre, colocation, and network footprint, including capacity planning and expansion.
• Drive automation, infrastructure-as-code, observability, and SRE practices to lower cost-to-serve.
• Own incident, problem, and major-outage management, including executive communication to clients.

Security, risk, and compliance

• Own the information security program and cyber resilience directly.
• Ensure compliance with POPIA, the Cybercrimes Act, ECTA, and, where relevant, ICASA licensing obligations.
• Support clients in regulated sectors, including financial services requirements for outsourcing and cloud (Prudential Authority / FSCA standards), and public sector requirements under the National Data and Cloud Policy.
• Maintain certifications such as ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, 27018, ISO 22301 and PCI DSS where applicable.
• Own business continuity and disaster recovery for internal and client-facing services.

People and organization

• Lead, grow, and retain a high-performing engineering organization in a competitive local skills market.
• Build succession plans, graduate and learnership pipelines, and skills development aligned to B-BBEE and Employment Equity targets.
• Foster a culture of ownership, engineering excellence, and customer focus.

Commercial and executive leadership

• Manage the technology budget (OPEX and CAPEX) and improve unit economics and gross margin per service.
• Act as senior technical voice with key clients, partners, and investors; support large bids and tenders.
• Report to the CEO on technology performance, risk, and investment.

Requirements

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field (NQF 7). Honours or Master's preferred.
• Relevant certifications advantageous: cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP), TOGAF, CISSP/CISM, ITIL.
• Experience
• 15+ years in technology, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role (Head of Technology, VP, or CTO).
• Proven experience running cloud, hosting, data centre, or telecoms infrastructure at scale with contractual SLAs.
• Track record of leading teams of 50+ engineers, including through multiple management layers.
• Experience managing multi-million-rand budgets and delivering measurable margin or cost improvements.
• Experience selling to and supporting enterprise, financial services, or public sector clients in South Africa.

Technical knowledge

• Virtualization and private cloud platforms (H3C, Sangfor, VMware, OpenStack, Nutanix, Proxmox or similar) and migration strategies.
• Containers and orchestration (Kubernetes), DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible).
• Storage (block, object, file), backup and DR technologies, and networking (SDN, BGP, peering, interconnects).
• Hyperscaler services and hybrid/multi-cloud architectures.
• Security architecture, zero trust, identity, and SOC operations.
• Emerging areas: GPU/AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud, FinOps.

South African context

• Working knowledge of POPIA, the Cybercrimes Act, ECTA, and data sovereignty requirements.
• Understanding of sector regulation affecting clients (Prudential Authority, FSCA, SITA and public sector procurement).
• Familiarity with B-BBEE, Employment Equity, and local skills development frameworks.
• Experience managing operations through load-shedding and grid instability.

Leadership competencies and attributes

• Strategic thinking: connects technology choices to market position, pricing, and margin.
• Technical credibility: respected by engineers; can challenge architecture and vendor claims in depth.
• Operational discipline: calm, decisive leadership during outages and security incidents.
• Commercial acumen: understands cost-to-serve, capacity economics, and contract risk.
• People leadership: builds diverse teams, develops talent, and retains scarce skills.
• Stakeholder influence: communicates clearly with the CEO, Board, clients, regulators, and partners.
• Integrity and accountability: owns outcomes and upholds governance in line with King IV principles.

Key performance indicators

Targets are placeholders to be set with the CEO and Board.

Area KPI

Reliability Platform availability against SLA

Reliability Major incidents and mean time to restore (MTTR)

Security Material security breaches; audit findings closed

Compliance Certifications maintained (ISO 27001, SOC 2, etc.)

Financial Technology spend vs budget; gross margin per service

Customer Client satisfaction (NPS/CSAT) and churn linked to technology

People Engineering retention; EE and skills development targets

Employment equity: Gole Cloud is an equal opportunity employer committed to the objectives of the Employment Equity Act. Preference may be given to candidates from designated groups in line with our Employment Equity plan.

Screening: Shortlisted candidates will undergo criminal, credit, qualification, and reference checks, with consent in terms of POPIA.

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