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Principal Specialist – Data & Analytics Engineering - Lesaka ( FinTech)

Lesaka Technologies Gauteng about 10 hours ago
Full-time
Engineering

Purpose

The Principal Specialist: Data & Analytics Engineering is the technical authority within the Data Engineering team, responsible for shaping how data is engineered, transformed, and delivered across the Merchant Division.

This role ensures:

High‑quality, scalable data architecture

Consistent engineering standards and best practices

Reliable, production‑grade data pipelines

Alignment between engineering outputs and analytical needs

Continuous improvement of the data platform

You are the technical conscience of the team — ensuring that every solution is built correctly, consistently, and sustainably.

Key Responsibility Areas

Technical Leadership & Architecture

Own and define the end‑to‑end data platform architecture.

Enforce engineering standards across pipelines, modelling, testing, CI/CD, and documentation.

Lead architectural reviews and guide complex technical decisions.

Identify and manage technical debt, scalability risks, and platform gaps.

Engineering Delivery

Lead delivery of complex, high‑impact data engineering workstreams.

Oversee multi‑source integrations and consolidation pipelines.

Own analytics engineering practices — including transformation and semantic layers.

Act as final technical reviewer for all production‑ready artefacts.

Ensure alignment with Analytics & Insights for downstream consumption.

Mentorship & Capability Development

Provide hands‑on technical mentorship to engineers.

Lead code reviews, knowledge sharing, and best‑practice adoption.

Support hiring and onboarding of new technical talent.

Build and elevate team capability across data and analytics engineering.

Qualifications & Experience

Essential:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

8+ years in data engineering and/or analytics engineering

Proven experience as a technical lead or principal engineer

Expertise in dbt or equivalent transformation tools

Strong experience with cloud data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks)

Advanced Python (pipelines, orchestration, testing)

Advanced SQL (optimisation, complex transformations)

Strong data modelling expertise (Kimball, Data Vault, OBT)

Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to stakeholders

Advantageous:

Financial services or fintech experience

Multi‑entity or post‑acquisition data environments

Streaming/event‑driven architecture exposure

Data governance, lineage, and cataloguing tools

Closing Date 19 May 2026