Kabelo Magabane

Technology Operations Leader with 15+ years of experience leading enterprise IT operations and digital workplace transformation across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EEMA), Pakistan, Turkey and Kazakhstan. Passionate about building high-performing teams and delivering exceptional employee technology experiences through automation, AI and operational excellence. Proven track record of improving service performance, driving cost savings and partnering with business leaders to deliver scalable technology solutions.

IT Team Lead EEMA - McKinsey & Company - Johannesburg, South Africa

(2022-05)

Lead IT teams, supporting 2000+ colleagues in 15+ countries. Partner with office leadership and senior stakeholders to align technology services with strategic objectives and act as the senior escalation point for business-critical incidents. Drive operational excellence across regional technology services, supporting business continuity, workplace productivity and reliable technology experiences for users across the region.

• Lead enterprise IT service delivery across 20+ countries, acting as the senior escalation point for 60,000+ technology incidents and service requests annually, ensuring stable and reliable technology services.
• Work closely with regional and global technology teams to review service performance, identify opportunities for improvement and standardise processes that enhance operational efficiency and employee experience.
• Established service governance, operational standards and knowledge management frameworks that improved service consistency, accelerated issue resolution and reduced key-person dependency across 20+ countries.
• Lead workplace technology, infrastructure and digital transformation initiatives, successfully delivering 25+ technology projects annually, including 9 office relocations and 6 office refurbishments, within agreed timelines, budgets and operational requirements.
• Drive the adoption of automation and GenAI-enabled workplace technologies, achieving 40%+ adoption, reduced manual effort by an estimated 20%.
• Lead the technology planning and delivery for 100+ executive, client and leadership events annually, coordinating cross-functional technology teams to maintain 99.9% service availability.
• Deliver annual cost savings of approximately 15-20% by negotiating and coordinating technology vendors supporting 100+ executive meetings, leadership events and client engagements annually.
• Negotiate telecommunications contracts and connectivity solutions across 20+ countries, improving service availability to 99.9%, reducing connectivity-related incidents by an estimated 25%.
• Drove knowledge-sharing initiatives that increased engagement with collaboration platforms, strengthened cross-functional collaboration, accelerated issue resolution.
• Lead inclusive, cross-regional engagement initiatives that strengthen trust, team cohesion and collaboration across diverse countries, cultures and working styles.
• Developed and standardized operational procedures, support processes and knowledge management practices that improved service consistency, strengthened governance and enhanced operational efficiency across the region.
• Coach, mentor and develop regional technology professionals through structured knowledge transfer, performance development and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration and service excellence across a geographically distributed team spanning 10+ countries and multiple time zones.

IT Team Lead Africa and Middle East - McKinsey & Company - Johannesburg, South Africa

(2020-05 - 2022-04)

IT Team Lead Africa - McKinsey & Company - Johannesburg, South Africa

(2018-05 - 2020-04)

IT Team Lead Johannesburg Office - McKinsey & Company - Johannesburg, South Africa

(2017-05 - 2018-04)

Network Operations Team Lead - Bytes Systems Integration: Altron

(2015-11 - 2017-04)

Led a Network Operations Centre and a team of 10+ analysts supporting 100+ enterprise customers, sustaining 99.9%+ service availability, running major incident and problem management and coordinating infrastructure maintenance and change activities.

Service Desk Team Lead - Bytes Systems Integration: Altron

(2015-05 - 2015-10)

Managed resolution of 500+ monthly incidents and service requests, produced executive reporting on SLA and productivity trends and standardised service desk procedures to improve first-call resolution.

Network Monitoring Agent - Bytes Systems Integration: Altron

(2010-04 - 2015-10)

Monitored enterprise network and infrastructure environments supporting thousands of users, handling hundreds of monthly alerts, fault diagnosis and escalations and analysing performance and capacity trends.

Bachelor of Arts - Public Governance - University of Johannesburg

CCNA - Cisco Certified Network Administrator - Technology Management Corporation

National Certificate - Systems Support - Bytes People Solutions

Foundation - Project Management - Torque IT