Job Title: Head of Data

Location: Tygerberg Office Park, Uys Krige Drive, Plattekloof, Cape Town, South Africa (Hybrid/On-site)

Role Overview

Lesaka is seeking an experienced and strategic Head of Data to lead data capabilities across the Group, with a dual mandate:

• At Group level: Act as Head of Data Engineering, defining and operating shared data platforms, architecture, and engineering standards across Consumer, Enterprise, and Merchant businesses.
• At Enterprise level: Own the end-to-end data function, including Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, Data Analytics, and Data Science, driving insight, innovation, and measurable business value.

This role is critical to enabling data-driven decision-making, scalable platforms, and advanced analytics across Lesakaʼs diverse and high-volume businesses.

Key Responsibilities

Group Responsibilities (Consumer, Enterprise, Merchant)

Serve as Group Head of Data Engineering, accountable for:  

• Data platform strategy, architecture, and tooling
• Reliability, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency of data platforms

• Define and enforce group-wide data engineering standards, best practices, and governance
• Build and maintain shared data infrastructure supporting high-volume transactional systems
• Partner with Group Technology, Security, and Architecture teams to ensure compliance, security, and resilience
• Enable self-service analytics and data access across all business units  
• Lead and develop senior data engineering leaders across the Group

Enterprise Responsibilities (Full Data Ownership)

• Act as Head of Data for the Enterprise business, with full accountability for: 

           - Data Engineering
           - Analytics Engineering 
           - Data Analytics / BI
           - Data Science

• Translate enterprise strategy into a data and analytics roadmap
• Drive adoption of modern analytics practices (semantic layers, metrics, experimentation, ML)  
• Partner closely with Enterprise leadership (Product, Sales, Finance, Operations)
• Deliver actionable insights that improve:  
  

          - Revenue growth
          - Customer acquisition & retention  
          - Risk management
          - Operational efficiency

• Oversee advanced analytics and data science use cases, including predictive modeling and optimization
• Own data quality, trust, and business usability within Enterprise

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

• Lead, mentor, and scale high-performing multi-disciplinary data teams
• Influence senior executives with clear, outcome-focused data narratives
• Balance short-term delivery with long-term platform evolution
• Act as a key advisor on data, analytics, and AI strategy
• Manage vendors, partners, and third-party platforms where applicable

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Ensure compliance with regulatory and data privacy requirements (e.g., POPIA)
• Implement strong data governance, lineage, and quality frameworks
• Partner with Risk and Compliance teams to ensure responsible data usage

Required Experience & Skills

Experience

• 10+ years in data roles, with significant leadership experience
• Proven experience leading data teams at scale
• Experience owning end-to-end data functions (engineering → analytics → data science)
• Background in complex, high-volume environments (payments, fintech, financial services preferred)
• Experience operating in multi-business or group structures
  

Technical & Functional Skills

• Modern data platforms (cloud data warehouses, streaming, orchestration)
• Strong understanding of analytics engineering and BI best practices
• Familiarity with data science and machine learning lifecycle
• Data governance, quality, and security frameworks
• Ability to translate business problems into data solutions

Leadership & Personal Attributes

• Strategic thinker with strong execution capability
• Excellent communicator across technical and non-technical audiences
• Comfortable operating at executive level
• Pragmatic, outcome-driven, and commercially aware
• Strong people leader with a track record of building senior teams