🚀 We’re Hiring: Principal Specialist – Business Advisory

Are you a commercially astute, relationship‑driven leader who thrives on translating complex data capabilities into real business impact?

Lesaka Merchant is looking for a Principal Specialist: Business Advisory to act as the strategic bridge between business and data, driving high‑impact engagement, shaping demand, and ensuring that analytics outputs translate into meaningful business decisions.

This is a senior player‑coach role for someone who excels at stakeholder influence, structured thinking, and turning insight into action.

📍 Location: In‑person (Rosebank / Woodmead)
📊 Reporting Line: Head of Business Advisory
👥 Direct Reports: None (Senior Individual Contributor)

💼 Purpose

The Principal Specialist: Business Advisory is the most senior business relationship practitioner within the Merchant Data Department.

You will:

• Own senior stakeholder relationships across the business
• Drive demand management and requirements quality
• Translate business needs into actionable data use cases
• Ensure insights drive decisions and measurable impact
• Set the standard for advisory excellence across the team

This role is critical in ensuring that data initiatives are aligned to commercial objectives, clearly defined, and effectively delivered.

🔍 Key Responsibility Areas

Senior Business Relationship Management

• Own relationships with senior and executive stakeholders across business units.
• Act as a trusted advisor, aligning data initiatives to commercial strategy and priorities.
• Proactively identify opportunities where data and analytics can drive value.
• Represent the Merchant Data function in leadership forums and strategic discussions.
• Manage competing priorities and expectations with transparency and professionalism.

Requirements Leadership & Demand Management

• Lead discovery for complex, high‑impact data and analytics initiatives.
• Produce high‑quality, structured requirements that enable clear delivery outcomes.
• Support pipeline governance, prioritisation, and escalation of constraints.
• Define standards for requirements quality across the advisory team.
• Contribute to business cases for major data investments.

Insights Playback & Mentorship

• Lead delivery of insights to senior audiences with clear commercial framing.
• Partner with Analytics & Insights to shape narrative and business meaning.
• Ensure outputs move stakeholders from understanding to action.
• Mentor and guide Business Advisory team members.
• Act as escalation point for complex stakeholder or delivery challenges.

🎓 Qualifications & Experience

Essential:
✔ Bachelor’s degree in Business, Commerce, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field
✔ 8+ years’ experience in business analysis, advisory, consulting, or similar
✔ Strong experience managing senior (executive‑level) stakeholder relationships
✔ Proven ability to lead requirements discovery and structured analysis
✔ Experience with demand/portfolio management processes
✔ Strong exposure to data, analytics, and insight delivery environments
✔ Demonstrated ability to present to senior stakeholders and drive decisions

Advantageous:
• Experience in fintech, payments, or financial services
• Understanding of modern data platforms and analytics environments
• Experience building business cases for data or technology investments
• Experience mentoring analysts or advisory professionals

🧠 Key Competencies

Stakeholder Authority
Builds trust and credibility with senior leaders through strong commercial understanding.

Requirements Mastery
Produces structured, high‑quality requirements that enable effective delivery.

Commercial Framing
Translates data capabilities into tangible business value and outcomes.

Insights Leadership
Ensures insights are impactful, actionable, and aligned to business priorities.

Team Leadership
Raises capability standards through mentorship, guidance, and example.

Judgement
Navigates ambiguity and competing priorities with maturity and integrity.

🌟 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 execute with urgency and discipline

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

🔗 Ready to shape how data drives business decisions at Lesaka Merchant?
Apply now — or share this opportunity with a high‑impact business advisory leader.

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