Senior Data Architect

Senior Data Architect

Job Grade: P4, .

• Location:
  
  Pretoria
• Job Type: 5 years fixed term contract
• Job Purpose:
  
  The primary purpose of this role is to lead and implement a comprehensive Data Governance Program and establish a robust, future-proof Data Architecture across multi-cloud platforms.

This role is crucial to revolutionizing CIPC's data management, enhancing data quality, streamlining analytics processes, and creating a centralized data hub, including a Data Marketplace, to foster a data-driven culture and enable advanced analytics across the organization.

• Data Architecture Strategy & Design:
  Design and maintain conceptual, logical, and physical data models, data dictionaries, and comprehensive data flow diagrams across the enterprise.
• Strategic Alignment:
  Develop forward-looking data strategies for data warehousing, data mining, and data integration that align with CIPC's business objectives and technological roadmap.
• Tool Evaluation & Selection:
  Evaluate, recommend, and select appropriate data management tools, technologies, and platforms.
• Data Lakehouse Architecture:
  Design and implement a secure, scalable, and highly available Data Lakehouse architecture across multi‑cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP).
• Data Pipeline Development:
  Establish robust, end‑to‑end data ingestion (batch and streaming) and ELT/ETL pipelines to incorporate diverse data sources into the Data Lakehouse.
• Analytics Enablement:
  Develop optimized data transformation, processing, and storage solutions tailored for advanced analytics, reporting, and data science workloads.
• Governance Frameworks:
  Define and establish comprehensive data management frameworks for data ingestion, lake, warehouse, sharing, analytics, and quality.
• Data Marketplace & Sharing:
  Design and implement a Data Marketplace architecture to facilitate governed data sharing and collaboration among internal stakeholders.
• Quality & Observability:
  Define and implement data quality monitoring, validation, and improvement processes, including developing data observability solutions.
• Metadata Management:
  Champion Data Catalog tools for data discovery, metadata management, and lineage tracking.
• Stakeholder Engagement:
  Collaborate proactively with IT, business leaders, and security teams to prioritize data requirements, define SLAs, and develop governance policies and procedures.
• Mentorship & Support:
  Provide technical guidance and support to data analysts, engineers, and scientists.
• Regulatory Compliance:
  Ensure all data systems and processes comply with relevant regulations, standards, and security policy.

Education

• Preferred:
  Bachelor's Degree or Advanced Diploma in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Analytics, Data Engineering, Statistics, Mathematical Sciences, Economic Sciences, or a related quantitative field.
• Alternative:
  National Diploma in Information Technology or related technical field.

Experience

• Minimum 5 years of proven experience as a Data Architect, Solutions Architect, or equivalent senior data leadership role with strong focus on cloud‑native data architecture and governance.
• Deep understanding of cloud services and technologies relevant to data management and analytics, including Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
• Strong knowledge of data modeling, ETL/ELT processes, data warehousing, and data governance best practices.
• Proficiency in SQL, Python, Spark, and other relevant programming languages and tools.

Certifications

• At least two advanced professional certifications, including one strategic framework and one platform‑specific architect certification.
• Strategic Architecture / Governance: TOGAF 9 Certified (or equivalent).
• Alliance:
  Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP) at Professional or Master level.
• Cloud Platform / Engineering:
  Databricks Certified Data Engineer (Associate or Professional), Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert or Azure Data Engineer Associate, Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer or Professional Cloud Architect, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or Data Analytics – Specialty.

• Deep Data Modeling Expertise – dimensional (Star/Snowflake), Data Vault,…