Data Engineering Manager

Mukuru is on the lookout for a Data Engineering Manager to join our awesome team. This role is open to applicants from Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria, with remote work possible.

Mukuru is a Fintech business offering the emerging consumer access to affordable and reliable financial services. Our foundation is built on international money transfers – helping customers to move money into, out of, and around Africa. From this base we’ve grown to provide a broad range of services to answer a greater array of financial needs of our customers. If being part of one of Africa’s largest money transfer companies, enabling millions of people to remit vital support to their loved ones across the region appeals to you, then we want to hear from you!

The Data Engineering Manager reports directly to the Head of IT Strategy and Architecture. This position is responsible for ensuring that data engineering platforms are fit for purpose, and will support future organisational strategy as well as lead the data engineering function by partnering closely with the BI team, Product Owners and Engineers to define and prioritize activities related to data integration design, data modelling, DataOps, Metadata management, and data integration design. External liaison takes place with 3^rd parties, where necessary.

Duties and Responsibilities (include but not limited to):

• Partner closely with data analysts and data scientists to deliver meaningful data solutions to business
• Lead a team of data engineers and guide them with the best data strategies in line with data needs
• Manage delivery through AGILE best practices
• Identify, design and implement process improvements that include building/re-engineering data models, data architectures, ETL/ELT/reverse-ETL data pipelines, and data applications
• Utilize tools and technologies to create data architecture that supports new data initiatives and is useful in products
• Increase automation and build analytic solutions at scale to serve the business requirements
• Design and architect data lakes on cloud platforms and BI application integrations
• Continuously look for data optimization processes and oversee data management, governance, security, and analysis
• Work with Compliance, Legal and Data Protection to ensure data governance policies are adhered to
• Ensure that cost per platform/system and environment impacted by the data engineering strategy can be determined and reported on to business, in order to use on ROI and similar metrics, ensuring cost efficiencies
• Maintain up to date knowledge of Data Engineering and Business Intelligence principles, industry standards and technologies
• Be the subject matter expert for Data Engineering in the organisation

Key Requirements:

• Grade 12 or equivalent
• Qualification in a quantitative field (includes but not limited to – Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, Computer Science, Actuarial Science)
• 7+ years working experience within Data Analytics or Business Intelligence, driving Analytics/BI projects to successful completion, resulting in business impact.
• 4+ years working experience designing and setting up cloud-based data lake and warehouse architectures
• 3+ years working experience directly leading and building a team of data engineers
• Experience building enterprise scale ETL/ELT data pipelines on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Snowflake)
• Experience with DevOps practices and tools, including version control, infrastructure-as-code, automated testing, and CI/CD
• Advanced SQL and Python programming skills
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills to gather and effectively communicate Analytics/BI project requirements, outcomes, results, and status.
• Strong communication and presentations skills able to appropriately structure communication to fit the type of audience i.e. technical vs. non-technical and organizational level (e.g., executive vs. operational manager)

Additional Skills/Experience:

• Experience working in the Financial Services, Retail, Technology industries or high growth businesses
• Experience building cloud-based data warehouses on platforms on as Azure, Snowflake, BigQuery or Redshift
• Be commercially curious with the ability to understand a business area and its strategic outcomes, as well as the business processes and metrics/levers that drive its performance.
• Teamworking and collaboration with keen interest on sharing knowledge
• Excellent organisational skills with ability to adapt and juggle many tasks without losing sight of the highest priority items and able to stay focused under pressure
• Passionate about your own self-development, adaptable and have a growth mindset
• Execution-oriented, and able to complete tasks independently using own initiative
• Attention to detail

Should you be appointed in a remote/work from home role at Mukuru, it is your responsibility to ensure that you have uninterrupted internet connectivity and a ‘work-like’ environment at your home location, to deliver your best in terms of performance, productivity, and service to our customers.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. If you do not receive any response after two weeks of the closing date, please consider your application unsuccessful.

NB: ALL STAFF APPOINTMENTS WILL BE MADE WITH DUE CONSIDERATION OF THE COMPANY’S EE TARGETS