Senior Data Engineer

Cape Town

Full time

Hybrid (3 days in-office)

Rival is a marketing consultancy for challengers—and we're looking for a Cape Town-based Senior Data Engineer to join our Media & Data team.

This isn't a role for someone who wants to do "business as usual." Our clients come to us because they need breakthrough marketing strategies that cut through complexity, beat incumbents, and create disproportionate impact.

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will architect, build, and maintain the data infrastructure that powers advanced media planning, activation, and measurement. You'll work with diverse datasets (first-party, retail media, digital analytics, CRM, syndicated, and financial), ensuring they are clean, connected, and ready for activation across channels and platforms.

This role is both hands-on and strategic: you will lead the design of scalable data pipelines, enforce data governance standards, and partner with data planners, strategists, and media buyers to ensure data flows seamlessly from ingestion to insight to activation.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and optimize data pipelines and ETL processes to integrate diverse data sources (ad servers, DSPs, retail media, CRM, CDPs, web analytics, social, financial, product).
• Architect and maintain cloud-based data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) to ensure scalability, reliability, and performance, both for Rival and our clients.
• Ensure interoperability between Rival's products and tools, client martech stacks, and external media platforms.
• Implement data validation, cleansing, and monitoring frameworks to ensure accuracy and reliability of client data.
• Enforce data privacy and compliance standards (GDPR, CCPA, and client-specific governance frameworks).
• Develop processes to document lineage, metadata, and manage user permissions across datasets.
• Partner with data planners and strategists to translate client business needs into technical data solutions.
• Provide technical expertise to support CDP implementation, tagging, and identity resolution strategies.
• Collaborate with analytics teams to optimize data availability for dashboards, econometric models, and campaign reporting.
• Work closely with our Chief Product Officer and other members of our engineering and product teams to collaborate on Rival's own products and capabilities.
• Eventually, mentor junior data engineers, ensuring consistent delivery of code and products within organisational best practices.
• Lead data engineering input in client discussions and technical workshops, articulating complex systems in clear, strategic language.
• Stay ahead of emerging data engineering technologies, martech integrations, and media data standards; recommend innovations that improve efficiency and performance.

Why Rival, Why Now

• A consultancy built differently. We're four years in, growing fast, and proving there's a premium alternative to yesteryear's holding company incumbents.
• Global perspective. Work with ambitious clients across North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
• Small team, big impact. With boutique sizing, you'll be firmly in the fray and expected to produce —no hiding in the back row.
• Direct influence. Work alongside Rival's founders and Creative/Design directors, shaping the consultancy's future as much as our clients'.

Who Thrives Here

We don't hire CVs, we hire people who think and act like challengers.

• You're highly organized and deliver excellence without compromise.
• You think like an entrepreneur—curious, bold, and unafraid to get stuck in.
• We do not require a minimum years of experience, but you do need to have significant experience in data strategy, analytics, and planning, ideally with an agency background.
• Expertise in and a strong point of view on the role of data in brand strategy, creative, paid media, and overall effectiveness measurement.
• Deep understanding of how data drives modern media investment across channels (predominantly, CTV, retail media, social, and search).
• Strong knowledge of major marketing technology providers and tools (our partners include marketing automation like Braze; DSPs including the Trade Desk; CDP providers like Rokt/formerly mParticle; reporting platforms like AdVerity, among others)
• Proven ability to design measurement frameworks, manage data governance considerations, and translate insights into business growth.

Extra points if…

• You've helped scale a start-up, agency, or consultancy.
• You've lived the battle of challengers vs. incumbents.
• You have experience inputting and developing advanced marketing analytical models or data science outputs, including media mix modelling,

Premium Compensation, Real Upside

We believe in rewarding excellence with premium upside, not average paychecks.

• Base Salary: Competitive within consultancy/agency benchmarks.
• Profit Share: Twice-yearly distributions (eligibility after 90 days), tied to performance.
• Employee Liquidity Plan ("shadow stock"): Share in Rival's long-term success—without the friction of traditional options (eligibility after 90 days),

Benefits Designed for Impact

• 21-days vacation days for South African employees + public holidays

• Discovery Health Medical Aid contribution

• Rival will contribute up to R3750 per month

• Retirement Annuity

• Rival will contribute a maximum of 3% of the employee's Cost to Company (CTC) to the RA fund.

• The employee must at a minimum match the company's contribution of 3%.
• Parental/Family/Maternity/Adoption Leave

About Rival

Rival is a marketing consultancy built for challengers.

Incumbent best practices deliver average results—we don't do average. We challenger brand thinking to help CMOs achieve outsized impact with smarter, leaner, bolder marketing strategies.

Our Hiring Philosophy

We're building a consultancy that's both premium and progressive—a home for the world's best marketing talent and a model for diversity in our industry.

Our commitments:

• Clarity and fairness in every process
• Respect for candidates' time (including paid tasks)
• Speed and transparency in communication
• Feedback opportunities throughout
• You'll speak to a range of people in different roles, to give you a flavour of what it's like here

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We know diverse perspectives drive better strategies. Rival is committed to building a consultancy where individuality fuels innovation. Authenticity isn't an initiative—it's a requirement.