Data Engineer

About Ninety One:

Ninety One is South Africa's largest investment manager and the only one with a global presence. The firm has 22 offices across 15 countries on five continents and manages R3.4 trillion of assets on behalf of clients (as at 30 Sept 2025).

Established in Cape Town in 1991 as part of the Investec Group, Ninety One demerged and rebranded in 2020, becoming an independent firm dual-listed in London and Johannesburg. Always an active manager, Ninety One today offers strategies across equities, fixed income, multi-asset and private markets to institutions, advisors and individual investors around the world.

About the team:

We are forming a dedicated Private Markets Technology squad to tackle operational and data challenges across our Private Markets platform. This focused, multi-disciplinary team will work closely with the Private Markets team to deliver high-impact, AI-centered solutions—reducing manual intervention and driving end-to-end automation wherever possible. Every initiative will be guided by a bold ambition: to reduce human/manual input to a minimum, and to lean fully into automation, intelligence, and data-driven design.

Rather than pursuing large-scale, monolithic change, the team will adopt an agile, iterative approach. Working visibly and collaboratively with the broader Private Markets business, they will focus on delivering incremental improvements—each aligned to our strategic technology platforms and enterprise architecture principles. This model ensures that every outcome contributes to a coherent, long-term technology vision while delivering measurable value along the way. Technology here is not a support function; it's a strategic enabler. As such, we're looking for people who think differently. Individuals who challenge norms, question inefficiencies, and imagine radical new approaches.

This is a unique opportunity to join a focused and empowered team at the heart of a transformational journey within Private Markets. Team members will be instrumental in shaping the operating model, tooling, and data infrastructure that underpins this rapidly growing asset class.

In this role you will:

• Be the technical SME for the Private Markets data domain, data sources, data usage and adherence to Ninety One data guidelines / best practice
• Assist with building out a modern, democratized, data platform for Private Markets, within the larger Ninety One Data Platform
• Assist the team with the ongoing support of existing and new data platforms
• Work with our various teams of software engineers, data engineers and analysts
• Collaborate with relevant IT Heads, Engineering Leads and Product Owners to define and execute our IT Strategy
• Build relationships within Technology and across the wider business through delivery. We succeed together.

You should consider applying if you have:

• A BSc or other relevant degree.
• A desire to build and work within a high-performing team
• The ability to work in an agile manner so as to ensure incremental delivery and ongoing momentum is maintained
• 3+ years actively working with programming languages such as Python and SQL
• Integration technologies, such as Rest APIs, Data Factory, Glue, Function Apps etc.
• Data storage technologies such as SQL, NoSQL, Blob storage etc.
• Modern data technologies such as Data Bricks, Fabric, Data Lakes, Spark, GraphQL etc,
• AI and ML
• Modern event technologies such as Event Grids
• Associate to expert level cloud and/or data certifications from Microsoft will be advantageous
• Experience with web front-end frameworks, such as React will be advantageous
• A prior knowledge of Asset Management or other Financial Services industries.

Some of the attributes we look for in a person are:

• A client focused and collaborative approach
• Intellectual curiosity
• The ability to 'approach and own' and continuously look for opportunities to develop
• Driven by results