BI Data Architect JHB, Johannesburg

Job Description Summary

The Senior IT Data Architect is a senior level position in the IT Data Management job family.

Additional Job Description

The Business uses SAP extensively and the BI data architect needs a strong grounding in SAP data structures to be successful in this role. Understanding of Microsoft SQL data modelling and Service Now and Salesforce.Com would be advantageous as these systems are also used extensively in the services portfolio.

The primary responsibility of the Senior IT Data Architect is to apply data analysis, data modelling and quality assurance techniques based on a detailed understanding of business processes in order to establish, modify or maintain internal data structures and associated components (entity, relationship and attribute descriptions). They develop and maintain of a formal description of the internal data and data structures of the business and this can include data definitions, data models, data flow diagrams referred to as metadata. They describe the internal data structures used by Internal IT and its computer applications software and address data in storage and data in motion; descriptions of data stores, data groups and data items; and mappings of those data artefacts to data qualities, applications, locations etc.

The Senior IT Data Architect is an entry level technologist who has a good background in application and IT Data Architectures within the context of IT Enterprise Architecture.

He or she has cross domain level knowledge and attends to data needs of internal clients and may work across domains and/or business units. The critical skills required from a Senior IT Data Architect is the conversion and migration of medium-sized amounts of data from one database to another whether implementing an entirely new enterprise application or consolidating, upgrading, or modernizing an existing one, virtualizing or moving to another service, a strong focus on data migration is essential to overall project success. The Senior IT Data Architect works in less complex environments but is able to develop his/her skills to start assuming a more complex role.

Job Description

Provide IT Data Architecture Consulting

The Senior IT Data Architect works with colleagues and internal clients with medium complexity information technology environments. They are responsible for ensuring that the data assets of the business are supported by an IT Data Architecture that aids the achievement of business strategic goals via applications and automated business processes that leverage or generate enterprise data. The IT Data Architecture should cover databases, data integration and the means to get to the data. Usually the Senior IT Data Architect achieves his/her goals through setting enterprise data standards.

This employee will perform high level design of the logical and physical architecture, logical and physical data model and extract, transform and load (ETL) processes. They will build data dictionaries, models, architecture diagrams, metadata repositories, data integration processes and ETL processes and ensure data quality.

This employee should be able to engage in Master Data Management (MDM), Big Data and NoSQL IT Data Architecture and solution architecture conversations with internal clients regarding databases in physical and virtual infrastructures.

Target state definition

The Senior IT Data Architect will work closely with a variety of stakeholders to ensure the definition of the target state, aligning during development and then following up to ensure enhancements are done in line with the original blueprint. During the definition of the target state, the Senior IT Data Architect collapses a subject to the atomic level and then builds it back up to the desired form. The Senior IT Data Architect breaks the subject down by going through 3 traditional architectural processes:

Conceptual - represents all business entities.

Logical - represents the logic of how entities are related.

Physical - the realization of the data mechanisms for a specific type of functionality.

This employee includes a complete analysis of the relationships between an organization's functions, available technologies, and data types.

Design planning

They ensure that data is clearly defined and they refine the logical design of the database so that it can be translated into a specific data model. In so doing, the Senior IT Data Architect takes responsibility for the mapping out of the conceptual design for a planned database in outline. They take ownership for the writing of database documentation, including data standards, procedures and definitions for the data dictionary (metadata). He/she will define all of the relevant data entities, not to specify computer hardware items.

Build models

They create, test and execute data management languages. These employees draft and model data and information architectures and develop the related guidelines, standards and best practices. They manage conceptual and logical data models at the enterprise data warehouse and organisational level. They adopt innovative architectural approaches to leverage and develop in house data integration capabilities consistent with the architectural goals of the business.

Data warehousing

These employees have deep knowledge of data warehousing and modelling concepts and architectures and use this to design and develop data warehousing star scheme, fact tables, dimension tables, lookup tables and the related procedures. They design and develop data integration routines to extract the relevant data from multiple operational data sources. They will perform transformation, lineage, profiling, cleansing and mapping of extracted data and load this data into the enterprise data warehouse.

Behavioural skills

The Senior IT Data Architect demonstrates good written and verbal communication skills. They have a good understanding of business data requirements and apply their excellent attention to detail. They are able to work with multiple stakeholders in the organisation and display good interpersonal skills. They are proactive and have excellent problem solving and good client service ability comes naturally. These employees display a good degree of creativity and lateral thinking ability.