Head of Data Science

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together one story at a time.
- With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group. Job Summary

Develop an integrated data science & engineering function and lead the agile solution design, deployment and ongoing optimization and evolution of enterprise wide data science & engineering products and services.

Job Description

Data Science & Engineering
- Work with business & technology stakeholders to define the data requirements for the business
- Translate the business requirements into a Data Strategy (integrating data science & engineering requirements) for optimal results
- Leverage the Group Data rails to translate the business requirements into a sound data architecture & direction for proactive Technology Services monitoring / management
- Lead the data automation agenda for Technology Services Monitoring & Management (where it makes sense to do so)
- Assume one stop shop accountability for all services monitoring / management related data products and services
- Guide the business on the appropriate data solutions & range of strategic data choices to be made
- Ensure & Oversee that solution designs & blueprints are translated into leading practice data engineering solutions (& related e.g. source code) that effectively deploy & optimize data retrieval, storage and distribution
- Leverage deep data science & engineering expertise to oversee the mining and modelling of raw data sets with leading practice data science toolsets e.g. advanced statistics, data wrangling, data mining, data analysis, feature engineering & predictive modeling, story-telling, distributed computing & data visualization, machine learning, data intuition
- Lead the detailed scoping, prioritisation & integration planning for data solutions
- Lead the data automation agenda across the estate
- Leverage deep technical expertise to guide and coach data science & engineering teams on appropriate solutioning
- Ensure data products and services translate for business into relevant, quality assured, accurate and commercially impactful data sets that enable strategic & operational decision making for the short, medium & long term
- Meaningfully contribute & ensure solutions align to the design & direction of the Group Architecture & Infrastructure standards, principles, preferences & practices. Short term deployment must align to strategic long term delivery.
- Strategically & operationally monitor the performance of data products and solutions - ensuring cost to value for our businesses (ROI of the data provided)
- Promote data literacy across the enterprise by sharing best practices and showing tangible business impact & recommendations as a direct result of the the data solutions provided
- Proactively stay ahead of the curve on data science & data optimization trends, tools, techniques as well as data engineering trends & leading practice tools and programs (e.g. automation, virtualization, AI, Machine Learning, Programming languages, Open Source Software e.g. Hadoop) & transition the organisation to advanced methods for the continuous optimization of data

Delivery Management (where there is a specific product / service you manage)
- With fluency in the deployment of agile methodologies, resource & manage the appropriate number and nature (skill & capability) of squad based teams to execute on both Run & Change elements of data delivery
- Ensure agile practices are implemented and sustained for effective delivery to business e.g. RETRO’s etc.
- Positively & proactively manage senior stakeholder relationships & expectations
- Proactively engage with & partner technology business units and broader enablement functions to drive alignment & leading practice in data solution design & deployment

People
- Proactively attract, recruit, develop, retain, reward & deploy a diverse resource base aligned to an ever evolving environment (ahead of demand)
- Build a high performance team environment through self-directed teams & PM alignment with agile working practices (including daily, weekly, etc. sprint routines, regular & honest feedback etc.)
- Accountable for the right people in the right teams to deliver on our tech strategy (always)

Financial & Vendor Management, Risk & Governance
- Carry the ‘one stop shop’ accountability for all data compliance, governance & overall risk associated with data solutions
- Manage all vendor selection processes (for data specifically and where relevant) & take full accountability for all related commercial impact
- Deliver on time & on budget (always)
- Hold one stop shop accountability for data quality & data integrity (always) across the business area
- Provide risk, governance, compliance & broader regulatory reporting as required
- Contri