Job Openings at Unilever

About the job
Title: Senior Data Engineer

Location: South Africa

Full/part time: Full-time

Reports to: Data and Analytics Leader

Start Date: asap

Context

• UL is driving digital transformation to enable us to become an analytical competitor and deliver 4G growth. Our mission is to Transform our organization to a digital first culture, delivered by a world-class data and insights team, leaping ahead of our competition in everything we do. Our new Data Science function will lead the path for UL to become data intelligent. The team will deliver advanced products at scale and work closely with the global team to ensure that local decisions in Unilever are augmented with insight & recommendations and to ensure we drive incremental sales and profit for the company by meeting the needs of our consumers, customers and employees.

There are five major themes to the Information and Analytics strategy:

• Deliver Intelligent systems at scale. Powering Business (cross functional) and Customer Development area through data and analytics. Building out the right applications to enable business teams to move faster, with more accurate and future looking decisions leveraging Big Data & Data Science.
• Winning disproportionately in UKI. We believe that the best way to move the needle for Unilever in Analytics is to create analytics products that make a significant impact on our business and drive competitive advantage in UKI.
• Drive Unilever to assisted and predictive decision-making. The future is about assisted decision-making with machines (AI/Cognitive Computing/Machine Learning) unlocking the insights from vast deluge of consumer, customer & internal data, and presenting this in a way that is simple for our teams.
• Make data a true asset. Better data and data science access for every part of Unilever, across the 3 data framework (Connectivity, Growth, Continuous Improvement) and leading through the Enterprise Data Executive.
• World-class Information. One Version of the Facts. Continued excellence in delivery of diagnostics and insights to focus attention when and where it matters with a focus on Big Bets, Strategic Initiatives and Leadership team reporting
• The I&A team is composed of data analysts, data experts, business insights analysts and data scientists, who can: quickly understand the business context + problem, apply advanced mathematics and/or statistics to large data sets; and operate in cloud based environments where data, models, and user interfaces reside in the same platforms-core technologies.
• We are looking for a passionate Senior Data Engineer, who enjoys optimising data systems and building them from the ground up, to join the I&A team.

Main Job Purpose

• Senior Data Engineer will provide technical data leadership in our I&A team. You will be responsible for creating, expanding, optimising and managing our data depositary warehouse and data pipeline architecture, as well as optimising data flow and collection. This role will support our data initiatives and will ensure optimal data delivery architecture is consistent throughout the organisation and ongoing projects.

Main Accountabilities

• Be the expert in UL Data, current and future
• Create and maintain optimal data pipeline architecture to balance performance and cost
• Assemble large, complex data sets that meet functional / non-functional business requirements.
• Identify, design, and implement internal process improvements: automating manual processes, optimizing data delivery, refactoring current architecture, data governance Inc. lineage, catalog and quality.
• Build the infrastructure required for optimal extraction, transformation, and loading of data from a wide variety of data sources using SQL, Data Warehousing, PySpark/Spark, Python and Cloud technologies.
• Work with software engineering best practices such as version control, continuous integration and test driven development including Azure Dev Ops and Git.
• Work with MS Azure including Databricks (Pyspark and Delta Lake), Data Factory, Dev Ops, ADLS, Blob Storage and Power BI Datasets
• Use of advanced SQL skills and an understanding of query and storage optimisation
• Ensure that deliverables meet or exceed functional, technical and performance requirements
• Contribute to the development of your own and team’s technical acumen
• Continuous learning of new tools & technologies via external sources that brings direct value to the business

Experience And Qualifications Needed

• Standards of Leadership Required in This Role
• Personal Mastery
• Agility
• Passion for High Performance
• Business Acumen

Professional Skills

Key Skills Required

• Advanced working SQL knowledge and experience working with relational databases, query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases, Basic use of Python would be desired
• Experience building and optimising data pipelines, architectures and data sets
• Experience performing root cause analysis on internal and external data and processes to answer specific business questions and identify opportunities for improvement
• Strong analytic skills related to working with unstructured datasets
• Experience with building processes supporting data transformation, data structures, dependency and workload management
• A successful history of manipulating, processing and extracting value from large disconnected datasets
• Working knowledge of message queuing, stream processing, and highly scalable data stores
• Experience supporting and working with cross-functional teams in a dynamic environment

Limitless curiosity and imagination to create novel business solutions

Relevant Experience

• B.S. or M.S in a relevant field (Business Analytics, Operations Research), or PhD, M.S. in a relevant technical field (Operations Research, Computer Science, Statistics, Business Analytics, Econometrics, or Mathematics)
• Overall experience of 2-5+ years preferred
• Experience with Azure cloud services (Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Azure DevOps, Azure Analysis Services and ADLS)
• Experience with Power BI (including Dax and M)
• Experience with relational SQL and NoSQL databases
• Proven familiarity with Data Governance processes and managing data quality, access, lineage and profiling using automated testing and continuous integration where relevant.
• Preference for working knowledge of SQL, Python and Spark.
• Preference for working knowledge of architectures to support advanced analytics and data science
• Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.