Role Overview
Lesaka is seeking an experienced and strategic Head of Data to lead data capabilities across the Group, with a dual mandate:
- At Group level: Act as Head of Data Engineering, defining and operating shared data platforms, architecture, and engineering standards across Consumer, Enterprise, and Merchant businesses.
- At Enterprise level: Own the end-to-end data function, including Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, Data Analytics, and Data Science, driving insight, innovation, and measurable business value.
This role is critical to enabling data-driven decision-making, scalable platforms, and advanced analytics across Lesakaʼs diverse and high-volume businesses.
Key Responsibilities
Group Responsibilities (Consumer, Enterprise, Merchant)
Serve as Group Head of Data Engineering, accountable for:
- Data platform strategy, architecture, and tooling
- Reliability, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency of data platforms
- Define and enforce group-wide data engineering standards, best practices, and governance
- Build and maintain shared data infrastructure supporting high-volume transactional systems
- Partner with Group Technology, Security, and Architecture teams to ensure compliance, security, and resilience
- Enable self-service analytics and data access across all business units
- Lead and develop senior data engineering leaders across the Group
Enterprise Responsibilities (Full Data Ownership)
Act as Head of Data for the Enterprise business, with full accountability for:
- Data Engineering
- Analytics Engineering
- Data Analytics / BI
- Data Science
- Translate enterprise strategy into a data and analytics roadmap
- Drive adoption of modern analytics practices (semantic layers, metrics, experimentation, ML)
- Partner closely with Enterprise leadership (Product, Sales, Finance, Operations)
Deliver actionable insights that improve:
- Revenue growth
- Customer acquisition & retention
- Operational efficiency
- Oversee advanced analytics and data science use cases, including predictive modeling and optimization
- Own data quality, trust, and business usability within Enterprise
Leadership & Stakeholder Management
- Lead, mentor, and scale high-performing multi-disciplinary data teams
- Influence senior executives with clear, outcome-focused data narratives
- Balance short-term delivery with long-term platform evolution
- Act as a key advisor on data, analytics, and AI strategy
- Manage vendors, partners, and third-party platforms where applicable
Governance, Risk & Compliance
- Ensure compliance with regulatory and data privacy requirements (e.g., POPIA)
- Implement strong data governance, lineage, and quality frameworks
- Partner with Risk and Compliance teams to ensure responsible data usage
Required Experience & Skills
Experience
- 10+ years in data roles, with significant leadership experience
- Proven experience leading data teams at scale
- Experience owning end-to-end data functions (engineering → analytics → data science)
- Background in complex, high-volume environments (payments, fintech, financial services preferred)
- Experience operating in multi-business or group structures
Technical & Functional Skills
- Modern data platforms (cloud data warehouses, streaming, orchestration)
- Strong understanding of analytics engineering and BI best practices
- Familiarity with data science and machine learning lifecycle
- Data governance, quality, and security frameworks
- Ability to translate business problems into data solutions
Leadership & Personal Attributes
- Strategic thinker with strong execution capability
- Excellent communicator across technical and non-technical audiences
- Comfortable operating at executive level
- Pragmatic, outcome-driven, and commercially aware
- Strong people leader with a track record of building senior teams
Closing Date 06 February 2026
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