Are you a technically strong, enterprise‑minded data leader who can build, scale, and govern a modern data platform in a complex, multi‑entity environment?

Lesaka Merchant is looking for a Head of Data Engineering to lead the design, delivery, and optimisation of our data platform — the backbone that powers analytics, insights, reporting, and decision‑making across the Merchant Division.

This is a senior leadership role for someone who combines deep technical credibility with strong execution discipline and cross‑functional collaboration.

📍 Location: In‑person (Rosebank / Woodmead)
📊 Reporting Line: Executive Head of Data
👥 Direct Reports: Data Engineers, Analytics Engineers, BI Engineers

💼 Purpose

The Head of Data Engineering is accountable for the end‑to‑end data platform, spanning ingestion, transformation, modelling, governance, and delivery of data to business consumers.

In a complex, post‑acquisition environment, this role ensures:

• A unified, governed, and scalable data platform
• Reliable, high‑quality data for analytics and reporting
• Efficient integration of multiple business systems
• Strong data governance, lineage, and control
• A stable foundation for decision‑making and growth

This role is both hands‑on and strategic, requiring leadership across engineering teams while partnering with analytics, business, and executive stakeholders.

🔍 Key Responsibility Areas

Data Platform Architecture & Ownership

• Own the architecture and evolution of the Merchant data platform (warehouse/lakehouse/hybrid).
• Define and manage the full data technology stack across ingestion, transformation, storage, and serving.
• Lead consolidation of data across multiple business entities into a unified data model.
• Ensure platform scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Maintain a clear platform roadmap aligned to business priorities.

Data Engineering Delivery

• Lead delivery of end‑to‑end data pipelines from source systems to analytics layers.
• Implement strong engineering practices (version control, CI/CD, testing, documentation).
• Oversee analytics engineering and BI infrastructure to ensure high‑quality outputs.
• Ensure data products meet business needs and are delivered on time.

Data Quality, Lineage & Governance

• Define and enforce data quality frameworks and monitoring processes.
• Maintain clear data lineage across all systems and transformations.
• Own the data catalogue and metadata layer for discoverability and governance.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory, audit, and data privacy requirements.
• Support Master Data and Golden Record initiatives.

Data Access & Stakeholder Enablement

• Design serving layers (views, marts, APIs) for easy, secure data consumption.
• Partner with Analytics & Insights to deliver fit‑for‑purpose data models.
• Support Business Advisory with accurate effort sizing and technical input.
• Ensure consumers can access data without needing deep technical knowledge.

Team Leadership & Culture

• Lead, mentor, and scale a high‑performing data engineering team.
• Define roles, structure, and capability as the function grows.
• Manage team capacity, velocity, and performance.
• Build a culture of ownership, quality, and engineering excellence.

🎓 Qualifications & Experience

Essential:
✔ Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
✔ 8+ years in data engineering, including leadership experience
✔ Proven experience designing and running a production data platform
✔ Strong experience with modern data stack (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, etc.)
✔ Experience with orchestration tools (Airflow, Prefect, or similar)
✔ Advanced SQL and Python proficiency
✔ Strong understanding of data modelling (Kimball, Data Vault, etc.)
✔ Experience integrating multiple source systems (APIs, databases, event streams)
✔ Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills

Advantageous:
• Financial services, fintech, or payments experience
• Experience with dbt or transformation tooling
• Real‑time/streaming architectures (Kafka, etc.)
• Data governance frameworks (POPIA, GDPR)
• BI platform exposure (Power BI, Tableau, Looker)

🧠 Key Competencies

Technical Depth
Strong engineering credibility with the ability to review and influence architecture and design.

Platform Thinking
Builds scalable, reusable, and maintainable solutions.

Delivery Discipline
Executes with structure, accountability, and predictable delivery.

Cross‑Functional Collaboration
Partners effectively with analytics, product, and business teams.

Quality Ownership
Maintains high standards for data reliability and integrity.

Leadership & Talent Development
Builds strong teams and develops capability across the function.

🌟 Our Values

At Lesaka Merchant, we are guided by four core values:

✔ Entrepreneurial Spirit – We innovate boldly and take ownership
✔ Integrity – We act with honesty, trust, and transparency
✔ Collective Wisdom – We collaborate and leverage shared expertise
✔ Bias to Action – We deliver with urgency and discipline

📌 Preference will be made to support EE / AA measures.

🔗 Ready to build and lead the data platform powering the future of Lesaka Merchant?
Apply now — or share with someone who can shape the next generation of data capability.

#Hiring #HeadOfDataEngineering #DataPlatform #DataLeadership #LesakaMerchant #BigData #AnalyticsEngineering #JohannesburgJobs #DataJobs #LI-DNI