Specialist: Data Analytics at The South African Revenue Service (SARS)

Job Purpose

• To be responsible for importing, cleansing, transforming, validating, aggregating and analysing data from various sources with the purpose of making conclusions about industry trends and best practices. To analyse and provide expert advice with regards to data analytics to achieve business objectives.

Education and Experience

Minimum Qualification & Experience Required

• Bachelor's Degree / Advanced Diploma (NQF 7) in Data Analytics, Data Engineering, Data Science or Statistics with 8 - 10 years’ experience in a data analysis environment, of which 3 - 4 years at operational specialist level.

Alternative #              

• Senior Certificate (NQF 4) with 15 years' experience in Data Analytics, Data Engineering, Data Science or Statistics environment, of which 3 - 4 years at a junior specialist level

Minimum Functional Requirements

• Basic Data Visualization in Microsoft Power BI & Microsoft Fabric       
• Business Intelligence Methodologies
• Database Knowledge
• Microsoft skills (Proficient in)– i.e. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.

Advantageous Skills

• Intermediate (practical application) Data warehouse knowledge.
• Intermediate (practical application) Programming Skills – i.e. SQL, and/or Python, R, etc.

Job Outputs:

Process

• Analyse and make recommendations about improvements to specialist systems, procedures and associated area's practice.
• Acquire data from primary or secondary data sources and maintaining databases, applying the knowledge of data extraction, transformation and business modelling.
• Constantly monitor the integrity and quality of business data and processes to identify deficiencies and facilitate process improvements.
• Draw on own technical or professional expertise, knowledge and experience to identify and recommend tactical solutions to defined risks and problems in practices.
• Conduct assessments and use information to advise, make recommendations and facilitate improvement.
• Develop a single practice area in alignment with operational activity and procedural frameworks and ensure tactical implementation. 
• Integrate business information, compare, analyse and produce reports to identify trends, discrepancies and inconsistencies for decision making purposes.
• Note potential problems and obstacles, accumulate supporting data and initiate actions to prevent or overcome predicted problems as may be identified.
• Optimise goal achievement through tactical strategy implementation and optimisation of practises, processes and systems across an internal value chain.
• Plan for value-added, continuous practice and system improvements to deliver on objectives to enhance tactical implementation and excellence.
• Proactively identify interconnected problems, determine its impact and use to develop best fit alternatives, best practice implementation solutions.
• Research and support workable recommendations/solutions that meet business needs through information analysis.
• Review the effectiveness of related approaches and methodologies by conducting research, and best practice benchmarking initiatives.
• Translate top-down policy in relation to own practice area and communicate impact to relevant stakeholders.
• Undertake information gathering, research and analyse data within broad guidelines to produce accurate plans and / or recommendations for business issues
• To design, develop and test complex / advance data analytics solutions like Reports, Dashboards, Analysis, Extracts, Models, etc.

Governance

• Develop and /or align governance and compliance policies for own practice areas to identify and manage risk exposure liability.

People

• Integrate new knowledge and transfer skills attained through formal and informal learning opportunities in the execution of your job.
• Provide specialist know-how, support, advice and practice thought leadership in area of expertise.

Finance

• Implement and monitor financial control, management of costs and corporate governance in area of specialisation.

Client

• Participate in the specialist practice community and contribute positively to organisation knowledge management.
• Provide authoritative, specialist expertise and advice to internal and external stakeholders.

Behavioural competencies

• Accountability
• Adaptability
• Analytical thinking
• Attention to details
• Commitment to Continuous Learning
• Conceptual Ability
• Expertise in Context
• Fairness and Transparency
• Honesty & Integrity
• Organisational Awareness
• Problem Solving and Analysis
• Respect
• Trust

Technical competencies

• Business Knowledge
• Data Analytics
• Data Integrity
• Data Collection and Analysis
• Data Governance
• Efficiency improvement
• Functional Policies & Procedures
• Information Management
• Knowledge Management
• Reporting
• Statistics & Mathematical Analysis
• System Thinking