Head Data Engineer at Old Mutual

The Role

Old Mutual’ s data strategy revolves around creating seamless and personalized experiences for our 13 million customers globally, enabled by top quadrant technology and deployed by the best data experts. To complement the existing cross-functional team, Old Mutual is looking for a Head Data Engineer who will lead and shape a data engineering capability to deliver on that strategy. This role will be responsible for the leadership of implementing and supporting large-scale data ecosystems across the Group. This thought leader will use best practices in cloud engineering, data management and data storage to continue our drive to optimize the way that data is stored, consumed and ultimately democratized.

Establishing and leading the Data Engineering Capability

• The Head Data Engineer will lead the execution of the data engineering strategy.
• Lead the transformation and build of a future fit data engineering capability with the right engineering skills to navigate the rapidly changing technology landscape.
• Partner with senior leaders and provide thought leadership with respect to sustainable data infrastructure for OML including managing strategic supplier relationships.
• Primary focus is on strategic planning and management of a high-performing and successful team, however technical oversite of code production is a key requirement.
• Lead the design and implementation of scalable and robust processes for ingesting and transforming datasets. Define and lead the creation and maintenance of data pipelines from a multitude of sources.
• Ensure that all data solutions are aligned and sequenced with the organisations cloud strategy. Leverage the right tools for data solutions including leveraging cloud native toolsets.
• Innovate and maintain the data architecture that will drive various initiatives across the organisation.
• Engineer data in the appropriate formats for downstream customer, risk and product analytics or enterprise applications. This enable the achievement of key business outcomes.
• Lead the build and support of data warehouses and data marts, which are scalable, repeatable and secure.
• Engineer and leading the development of API’s for returning data to Enterprise Applications.
• Enable the business to solve the problem of working with large volumes of data in diverse formats, thereby enabling innovative solutions.

Continuous improvement to ensure effective service

• Participate in the various data quality improvement and data augmentation programs and ensure seamless integration into the various data structures.
• Ensure statutory and legislative knowledge is always current in order to advise the business on corrective solutions to mitigate risks and to improve the customer experience whilst complying with governance requirements.
• Ensure adherence to organisational policies, practices and procedures.
• Identify solutions to enhance cost effectiveness and increase operational efficiency.
• Provides thought leadership and industry expertise in all aspects of data engineering. Identifies opportunities for improvement and drives change.

Service delivery to ensure customer satisfaction

• Maintain service, quality and desired outputs across the business process by ensuring compliance to tactical policies, procedures and standards.
• Establish productive operational relationships with key stakeholders in the various channels and administrative teams.
• Develop work routines in line with operational plans / schedules in order to manage achievement of service delivery goals.
• Share knowledge on, and participate in the creation of new standards, control systems and procedures to maintain service delivery.

Qualifications and Experience Required

• Matric
• Degree in Computer science, database systems, mathematics, business administration, economics or related
• 5+ years’ experience in architecting and engineering data solutions with the latest hardware and engineering competencies.
• 7+ years of experience with data warehouse technical architectures, ETL/ELT, and reporting/analytic tools
• People management experience
• Strong experience in building fast, robust, effective and efficient analytics data pipelines with modern cloud development technologies covering data collection, transformation, storage and exposure 
• Hands on development experience in AWS S3 and AWS services.
• Experience with Dev/OPS architecture, implementation and operation.
• Knowledge of Engineering and Operational Excellence using standard methodologies.
• Extensive experience working with all data warehousing technical components, infrastructure and their integrations.

Competencies

• Strategic: Ability to understand, identify and act on broader opportunities in order to drive longer term, value-adding change. Applies judgement effectively. Identifies and acts on market and/or competitor trends/opportunities.
• Customer First: Putting the customer at the heart of business decisions and driving to improve value for customers.
• Collaboration: Creates trust, respect and builds meaningful relationships. Able to handle a wide range of relational challenges to ensure collaboration across boundaries.
• Leading with Influence: Influences and rallies people behind common goals; actively supports growth and inspires others to exceed expectations. Communicates clear strategies and objectives for own function.
• Innovation: Generates creative/out of the box solutions. Challenges the status quo and/or demonstrates ability to relate to challenges from a range of diverse but relevant perspectives. Willing to take calculated risks when introducing novel ideas.
• Personal Mastery: Learns and actively works to build self-awareness; develop through experience and feedback from others. Copes effectively with stress and has the resilience to take on stretching and challenging assignments. Adjusts effectively to work within new work structures; processes; requirements and cultures.
• Executing: Displays consistent energy, drive and perseverance in order to deliver results. Demonstrates a willingness to take calculated risks to achieve stretch performance goals.

The appointment will be made from the designated group in line with the Employment Equity Plan of Old Mutual South Africa and the specific business unit.