Senior BI Data Architect/Modeller

Based in the Marketing Data Science Hub team within the Marketing and Distribution space, the candidate is responsible for the design and implementation of processes, tools, methodologies, and frameworks for collecting and managing data effectively throughout its life cycle, from source through to finalised business insights. The data structures designed within this role will form the basis of a successful performance marketing team, and will allow for automated reporting, advanced analytics, and other operation support to clients within the Marketing and Distribution space.

The candidate will work closely with the head of the Marketing Data Science & Analytics Hub to strategically build out a custom data environment to suit the above-mentioned needs in a way that will make learnings/data readily available to other users across Discovery. 

 Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to:

The BI Data Architect must understand the entire data landscape to ensure that solutions are implemented in a sustainable manner. Responsibilities include

• Interact with business and technical stakeholders to establish end-to-end information needs.
• Investigate and evaluate data sources to identify limitations and determine reliability and usability.
• Identify data redundancies and define and implement a road map to resolve.
• Design and implement data quality resolution strategies in conjunction with business and technical stakeholders.
• Implement appropriate data security controls to ensure that data is kept safe.
• Design and document conceptual, logical and physical data models and repositories using a variety of data modelling techniques.
• Design and document re-useable feature sets for machine learning pipelines.
• Design and document data orchestration frameworks that are required to maintain data models, repositories, feature sets and data science model predictions.
• Establish, maintain, and ensure compliance with data modelling and data integration standards
• Document and implement data management and governance standards and processes.
• Lead a team of data modellers and ETL developers in driving BI deliverables for business.
• Mentor young data professionals and assist with determining the learning path to increase capabilities within the team.

Competencies and experience

• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and complexity.
• Solid experience in gathering data requirements and performing advanced data analysis techniques.
• Experience working with BI front-end tools to develop prototype solutions (Power BI) 
• Experience in designing conceptual, logical and physical data models and repositories at an enterprise level with a specific focus on re-usability.
• Strong database fundamentals (normalization and de-normalization).
• Dimensional Modelling (Kimball Methodology)
• Experience in ETL design and good understanding of ETL solution architectures.
• ODS, data warehouse, data mart, cube, database technologies and big data frameworks.
• Experience working with very large data volumes.
• Strong understanding of Master Data management (MDM), Metadata Management and Data Governance (DG).
• Strong SQL query writing ability (across database environments).
• Microsoft data technology (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, T-SQL).
• Advantageous: Good understanding of structure, semi-structured and unstructured data sources (XML, JSON).
• Advantageous: Experience with GCP, Azure or AWS cloud architecture and data flow processes.
• Advantageous: Data science programming (Python, R, Java, C#).
• Advantageous: Experience in building machine learning feature pipelines.

Education 

• Bachelor's degree in either computer science, computer engineering, information systems or a related field.
• Certifications in business intelligence or data science will be an added advantage.
• Minimum 5 years' experience in BI / Data Science with over 3 years' experience in implementing complete BI solutions at an enterprise level.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY   

The Company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.