Senior Data Scientist - Johannesburg at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• We are looking for a Senior Data Scientist to join the Personal and Private Banking Data Science team at Absa Bank. As a Senior Data Scientist, you will become a collaborator within a team of specialist data scientists aiming to help Absa discover the insights hidden in its vast amounts of data and help enable smarter decisions to deliver better products and services and shape business strategy. You will be expected to take on the most complex artificial intelligence projects, as well as provide technical mentoring and coaching for junior team members.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with large-scale structured and unstructured datasets using modern data platforms (e.g. Databricks, AWS, other cloud-based environments).
• Design, build, and deploy high-quality machine-learning models and applied AI solutions (including large language models) to drive strategic and competitive advantage, ensuring robustness, governance, and interpretability.
• Partner with stakeholders across business, product, marketing, risk, strategy and technology teams to help translate their challenges into actionable data science models and embed insights into decision-making processes and strategy.
• Partake in data science community of practice in the broader organisation by sharing knowledge and skills
• Mentor junior data scientists and contribute to best practices in analytics, modelling, and storytelling.

Minimum Experience and Skills Requirements

• 7+ years’ experience in data science or advanced analytics
• Deep knowledge of machine learning methods, principles and frameworks
• Strong programming and data querying skills (SQL, PySpark, Python)
• Machine Learning: Scikit-learn, PyTorch, PyCaret, etc.
• Hadoop Big Data Platform: Spark, hdfs, hive, etc
• Python Tools: pytest, conda, poetry etc
• DevOps: Git (GitHub), bash, ssh, CI/CD Pipelines
• Cloud: DataBricks, AWS
• Presentation skills: ability to efficiently present data and ML models insights to a non-technical audience
• Team Skills: guiding junior team members, defining and maintaining team standards
• Experience delivering end-to-end analytical solutions in a complex, data-rich environment (financial services experience is advantageous).

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Physics, or a related quantitative field.
• Postgraduate qualification (Honours / Master’s) in Data Science is advantageous.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

End Date: January 30, 2026