Senior BI Architect at Sanlam Group

We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future - your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth. Through its business clusters - Sanlam Personal Finance, Sanlam Emerging Markets, Sanlam Investments, Sanlam Corporate, Santam, Miway, as well as the Group Office - the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

What Will You Do?

The purpose of this technical lead role is to design best in class data analytics solutions and rally a team of skilled data modellers and scientists around a common technical vision. In addition, the role is required to take ownership of all technical aspects (functional and non-functional) of BI projects and operational solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Define and continuously improve the BI and Data architecture framework and solution architecture standards, including:

• Develop and maintain an understanding of the business strategy and evolving business priorities.
• Contribute to the development of the next-generation BI and data architecture framework developed on a group of core technologies.
• Contribute to the definition and continuous improvement of the BI and data architecture framework and associated solution architecture patterns and standards
• Ensure that the BI (Data Warehousing, Reporting and Analytics) approach integrates into the methodologies and processes of the Group’s businesses
• Stay abreast of best practices and / or new developments in BI (Data Warehousing, Reporting and Analytics) and related disciplines and drive adoption as deemed appropriate.

Define and create BI and data architecture models that are aligned with business blueprints, non-functional requirements, delivery constraints, data, application and technology standards

• Analyze business requirements and create related architectures and designs for the baseline (“as is”) and target (“to be”) solution architectures.
• Define architecture and solutions for data acquisition, data integration and data management
• Define architecture governance processes and quality compliance criteria.
• Perform quality assurance checks on BI and data architectures and designs and enforce quality compliance criteria to set policies and standards.
• Perform quality checks on existing BI and data architectures and designs to identify potential business risks areas and make re-engineering recommendations.
• Ensure BI and data security conforms to information security and information governance policies and standards.

Design, document, communicate and own development of technical solutions that deliver on business requirements
Provide expert BI (Data Warehousing, Reporting and Analytics) input and engagement with a wide range of technical stakeholders to ensure solution architectures and designs are in line with the Group BI technology standards
Build and foster a relationship with the SC IT Architecture team. Ensure any architectural, pattern or approach decisions or adjustments to the BI environment are carried out in collaboration with SC IT
Mentor and guide other Developers

Qualifications And Experience

• Relevant tertiary qualification in Computer Science, Statistics, Informatics, Information Systems, Engineering or another quantitative field (Masters level qualification would be beneficial).
• 8 - 10 years’ experience in application and data engineering.
• Proven experience in data architecture design and delivery is essential
• Designing, building and maintaining a modern data platform, including data lakes, data warehouses, etc.
• Extensive experience with data warehousing (Kimball and Data Vault patterns are preferred) and dimensional data modelling (OLAP and MDX experience)
• Exposure to modern data platform technologies that support cloud, big data, real-time data provisioning, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence implementations, including event streaming based data pipelines (e.g. Kafka or Nifi)
• Understanding of the information management and information architecture domain (e,g DAMA / DMBOK)
• Data visualization and reporting tools (e.g. SAP Business Objects, Power BI etc.).
• Understanding of identity and access management technologies (LDAP / Kerberos / SAML / IBM IAM products)
• Database technologies (e.g. SAP Hana, Teradata or similar) and database development (views, functions and stored procedure development)
• Hadoop components including HDFS, Hive, Spark, Oozie and Impala
• Object-oriented/object functional scripting languages: Python, Java, Scala or related.
• ETL tools (e.g. SAP Data Services)

Knowledge And Skills

• Architecture and design (UML, OO, SOA, etc.) S/W frameworks and methodologies (Agile, TOGAF, etc.)
• Solid track record in successful delivery solution architecture
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and logical skills
• Data Analysis
• Database knowledge and monitoring
• Data security
• Data risk management
• Project architectural oversight
• Ability to mentor others and provide technical direction on data architecture, reporting, warehousing, and online analytical processing (OLAP) design; and
• Ability to communicate design solutions to both technical and non-technical audiences, clearly identifying and articulating the benefits to the business of recommended solutions and approaches

Core Competencies

• Cultivates Innovation by creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful.
• Client Focus - Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions.
• Drives Results - Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances.
• Collaborates - Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.
• Resilience - Rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations.

Personal Qualities

• Organisational Savvy - Maneuvering comfortably through complex policy, process and people related organizational dynamics.
• Manages Complexity - Making sense of complex, high quantity and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.
• Drives Engagement - Creating a climate where people are motivated to do their best to help the organisation achieve its objectives.
• Business Insight - Applying knowledge of the business and marketplace to advance the organisation’s goals.